WASHINGTON – Will Congress start work this week on two bills for which the Pentagon and US defense sector are clamoring? It’s anyone’s guess.
The 113th Congress is expected to adjourn by the end of next week. In the remaining 10 or so legislative days, lawmakers are set to battle over corporate tax breaks and immigration while also flirting with a government shutdown.
Caught in the partisan and intraparty squabbling are the 2015 defense authorization and appropriations bills.
Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday listed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) among his must-pass bills.
"We need to work on [passing] the defense authorization legislation," Reid said on the Senate floor. "We have a lot to do, and there isn't much time to accomplish it."
Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees have for several weeks been negotiating a compromise version of the NDAA. But talks stalled before Thanksgiving over several personnel issues.
Committee chairs told reporters before a weeklong holiday break they hoped to get the pre-conferenced NDAA on the floor this week. But as the chambers gaveled back in Monday afternoon, it was unclear whether they would meet that goal.
"It is all totally up in the air," a Senate aide said when asked about the prospects of the NDAA hitting the floor this week.
Also up in the air: whether lawmakers will find a way to avert shuttering the Pentagon and other federal agencies, and how things will play out if they do.
The chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations committees, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., have been working on an omnibus spending bill. It would feature a dozen full-year 2015 agency spending bills, including one for the Pentagon.
But all eyes are on the House, where conservative members are pressing their leaders to tie measures limiting President Barack Obama's immigration order to the shutdown-averting funding bill.
Several House aides were mum Monday about how the chamber intends to move forward.
But a Senate aide with knowledge of the appropriations talks told CongressWatch, "we are writing an Omnibus that includes all 12 bills and our hope is to move it forward by next week."
The Senate aide reported "lots of work this past weekend and over Thanksgiving to get it into shape."
Reid is threatening to keep the Senate in session beyond next week to finish its outstanding legislation.
"We may have to be here a third week [in December] and everyone should understand that," Reid said, listing passage of a government-funding bill as "our most important task at hand.
"We may have to be here the week before Christmas and hopefully … not into the Christmas holiday," he said. "But there are things we need to get done."
Over in the House, some veteran members see a government shutdown as a political loser for Republicans.
"Right now, all authorization for spending expires on Dec. 11, and I don't think it's good for the Congress or it's good for the Republican Party, or good for the people for us to be bogged down in an endless budget debate between now and the end of the year and then into next year with a Republican House and Republican Senate," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said Sunday on Fox News.
While tea party members want to fight over immigration now, veteran Republicans want to hold fire until they control both chambers come early January.
"I want us to have a clean slate so we can lay out our agenda and have real budget fights going into next year, but not to be ... lurching from month to month," King said. "We should wrap it up through Sept. 30, but then, as of Jan. 1, really start fighting it out over what our policies are and what the president's are." ■
Email: jbennett@defensenews.com.
