The Senate on Thursday easily passed a stopgap bill to avert an end-of-month shutdown, even as lawmakers signaled bigger spending fights ahead over President Trump’s desired U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The Senate voted 82-15 to pass the bill, which would keep the government running through Nov. 21. The Democrat-led House passed it last week and the president is expected to sign it into law.
“The business of the American people and the responsibilities of Congress do not pause while the House prepares to formally begin an impeachment inquiry,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer.
Mr. Schumer said the “easy” part is passing the stopgap bill, known on Capitol Hill as a “continuing resolution,” but the hard part will be passing full-year spending bills for fiscal 2020, which starts Oct. 1.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby said if Democrats can’t work out a deal with the president on border security, Congress might have to pass a full-year continuing resolution that would essentially keep funding at its current levels through next September.
“That is not the outcome I am hoping for and, I trust, neither are my colleagues,” the Alabama Republican said.
He said it would be a “shame” to shortchange the military and other agencies, after lawmakers struck a two-year budget deal over the summer that allows Congress to spend about $320 billion more than what had been allowed under law.
Mr. Shelby’s committee signed off on five full-year spending bills Thursday that fund programs dealing with the environment, foreign operations, commerce, justice, science, the legislative branch, and homeland security.
Four of the bills passed without objection, while the homeland security funding bill — which contains an additional $5 billion for the border wall — advanced on a 17-14 vote.
The committee turned aside Democratic pushes to ax the new money for the wall and prevent funds from being diverted from military construction projects to pay for it.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, the top Democrat on the panel, said he wished he could support the homeland security bill, but that the additional wall money was a waste of taxpayer dollars and “bad for our country.”
“It is not about solving real problems, it is about fulfilling a campaign promise,” Mr. Leahy said.
Mr. Trump also requested $5 billion in border wall money for fiscal 2019, but Congress approved $1.375 billion. The president signed that measure, but then declared an emergency on the southern border, tapping about $7 billion in additional money he said could go toward the wall despite Congress’s protests.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted 54-41 to rebuke Mr. Trump for declaring the emergency to transfer $3.6 billion in military construction money to wall construction, though the resolution is unlikely to survive the president’s veto pen.
On the broader spending process, lawmakers are still trying to figure out how to end the frequent exercise of resorting to short-term funding bills when they can’t get all of their work done on time.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska Republican, suggested what she called a “go to your room” provision that would bar lawmakers from using official funds to travel outside Washington during any shutdown.
“We stay here and we get our job done,” she said. “When the kids are fighting and you just can’t handle it anymore, you say ’go to your room and don’t come out until you [have] stopped fighting.’”
Sen. David Perdue, who voted against the stopgap bill, said Congress has passed 187 continuing resolutions in 45 years.
“This is absolutely ridiculous,” the Georgia Republican said. “It’s time to quit the partisan games and put the national interest before political self-interests. Again, the Senate will continue to face the same dilemma every single year until we finally fix the broken funding process.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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