McConnell previews ‘significant outstanding’ legislative priorities for lame-duck Congress

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell previewed the list of legislative priorities for the lame-duck session as Congress faces large bipartisan lifts with an end-of-year deadline.

“There is significant outstanding business that Congress needs to complete before the end of the year,” he said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “The next few days will tell us a lot about whether Congress can pull off the bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process that I believe both sides would like to deliver.”

Mr. McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said he hopes House and Senate appropriators will be able to hammer out the broad terms for a comprehensive spending bill by the end of this week.

Lawmakers have about 25 days before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government, and both Mr. McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have committed to passing full spending bills rather than another short-term continuing resolution.

House and Senate negotiators also need to work out a compromise on language for the National Defense Authorization Act, which typically passes with strong bipartisan support, with the proposal to rename U.S. military bases that honor Confederate leaders being one of the most notable sticking points.

However, there has been a glaring lack of progress on a coronavirus relief bill. Despite both sides calling for negotiations to restart, they remain billions of dollars apart.

Mr. McConnell put the blame on Democrats, who blocked Senate Republicans’ attempts to put forward slimmed-down bills with a price tag of about $500 billion before the election as negotiations for a comprehensive bill between the White House and Democrats dragged on.

“Our Democratic colleagues have spent months, literally months, holding all of that urgent help hostage over unrelated left-wing wish-list items,” Mr. McConnell said.

Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, is sticking by her $2.2 trillion asking price and has called for Republicans to return to the negotiation table, dismissing talk of a scaled-down bill.