Five obstacles lawmakers face in reaching an omnibus deal

Congressional negotiators are working under the wire to secure a bipartisan omnibus spending deal to keep the government funded through the fiscal year with a mid-February deadline around the corner.

Lawmakers are entering a critical two-week stretch to pass legislation before Feb. 18, when current funding is scheduled to lapse. 

It’s likely that Congress will have to approve a third continuing resolutions (CR), which allow the government to remain funded at the previous year’s fiscal levels, to stave off a shutdown, as disagreements remain on a combination of issues.

Here are five obstacles Republican and Democratic lawmakers face in securing a deal.

Timing

Negotiators have been eyeing an omnibus spending package to fund the government through fiscal 2022, which ends in late September. But lawmakers have little legislative time to spare, as the House is set to be out of session after next week.

House Democrats are looking at passing a short-term spending bill as early as next week as leaders continue to have a hard time finalizing a deal on an omnibus before the shutdown deadline. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and others have continued to put pressure on negotiators for an omnibus deal as the deadline approaches. But a growing number of lawmakers think Congress is headed for another continuing resolution this month.

Some appropriators are hopeful top leaders will at least be able to reach a deal that solves the current major outstanding issues holding up the federal funding package in the coming days to ensure a path forward for an omnibus.

“I would still hope that we have agreements on everything by the 18th, and all that’s left to do is finalize and then read the bill,” Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of Republican leadership who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told The Hill earlier this week.

Top line number 

Negotiators say top leaders have still failed to reach a bipartisan agreement on an overall topline figure for an omnibus spending package.

“What’s preventing us from getting a deal is a lack of agreement on top lines,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said this week. “What’s frustrating is that Republicans refused to engaged in any conversation about toplines for most of the end of last year.”

Democrats have blamed Republicans for holding up progress in negotiations, insisting both sides come to an agreement on a topline first for fiscal 2022 spending in talks.  

At the same, however, Republicans have been pointing the finger at the other side of the aisle, calling on Democrats to drop so-called “poison pill” policies in negotiations and for them to meet their demands for defense spending before trying to reach a deal on a topline number. 

“We should have been negotiating on this for a while, but our Democratic friends haven’t wanted to,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who also serves on the appropriations body, said this week.

Parity between defense and nondefense

A major sticking point keeping both sides from agreeing on a topline figure is parity between defense and nondefense spending.

The months-long stalemate has come as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pressed for equal levels of growth on defense and nondefense spending in fiscal 2022 talks. 

McConnell has warned Republicans will block appropriations legislation in absence of a larger bipartisan spending deal in the 50-50 Senate. But to strike a deal, he has said there would need to be parity in growth in both areas.

Rep. Kay Granger (Texas), the top-ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, signaled in remarks to reporters while leaving a meeting with other top negotiators earlier this week that progress is being made on this front.

“We’re still working through some of those issues,” she acknowledged. “But there are fewer issues than there were before.”

Legislative riders 

Negotiators say legislative riders like the Hyde Amendment, a decades-old amendment many Democrats oppose that bars Medicaid from being used to cover abortions, are among non-starters standing in the way of a deal.

“There was a lot that was loaded up from the House,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who also serves on her chamber’s appropriations panel, told The Hill on Thursday.

Earlier this week, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), top ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, reiterated that the topline deal will come after hashing out an agreement on “principles.”

“As I said earlier … that if we reach an agreement on our principles, that the topline will follow,” Shelby told reporters this week.

Veteran Affairs funding

Shelby acknowledged that funding for Veteran Affairs is also a sticking point in spending conversations.

“We’ve had trouble with the VA funding,” Shelby told reporters this week. In recent years, the VA Mission Act has emerged a major hurdle for lawmakers to tackle when hashing out funding for Veteran Affairs during the annual appropriations process.

The act passed in 2018 and was a sweeping bipartisan reform bill that sought to expand veterans’ access to private health care. But costs stemming from Trump-era program have previously served as a source of conflict between both sides of the aisle, according to Roll Call.

“That isn’t something we’ve talked about and we’re going to have to resolve, but we’d like to get into the base funding and go from there,” Shelby said.

“When you create programs … it sounds good, it gave veterans a lot of options. But we’ve got to figure out how to pay for it,” he added.