Congress Skips Town With Major Battles Looming Over Conservative Amendments to Funding Bills

Congress is breaking for its August recess with key battles over the National Defense Authorization Act, government funding, military nominations, and the farm bill looming over its return.The most high-profile battle expected between the Senate and House Republicans upon Congress’s return is over the NDAA, with the House and Senate passing different versions of the bill.The topline is that the Senate passed, by an 86-to-11 margin, a $886 billion version of the bill, while the House passed an $874 billion version. While the numbers alone are sure to cause a fight, especially with conservatives posturing on national spending, the differences in the bills go beyond that.The House version of the bill, passed by the Republican majority, includes a laundry list of conservative amendments aimed at enacting social policy through defense funding.These include a ban on gender-affirming care being covered by the Pentagon health plans as well as a ban on the military reimbursing out-of-state travel for abortions. Republicans also inserted measures to roll back the Pentagon’s diversity initiatives.These amendments are not included in the Senate’s version of the bill, setting up a battle for when the chambers enter the reconciliation process after the recess.“It’s going to take some work, but we just hope that we would focus on actual issues related to national defense and not have to deal with all the extraneous things,” Senator Peters told CNN on the topic of reconciliation.The Senate’s NDAA also did not assuage the Republican who has been single-handedly holding up key military and Department of Defense appointments over the issue of the Pentagon reimbursing service members for abortion-related travel expenses, Senator Tuberville. Traveling for abortions has recently emerged as an issue after several states passed strict restrictions on abortion following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade a little more than a year ago.Mr. Tuberville is holding up about 300 appointments over the policy, and the Pentagon has shown no signs of budging, saying that the policy is legal.Although it looked for a moment as if Majority Leader Schumer might offer Mr. Tuberville a vote on the issue in exchange for a release of his hold, that vote didn’t materialize before the end of the session.Although some Senate Republicans, like Senator Graham, have publicly said that the hold is beginning to become a liability for their party, there’s been no sign from leadership that they will pressure Mr. Tuberville into ending his hold.At an event at the Truman Library Institute, President Biden accused Mr. Tuberville of “undermining the military,” in one of the most public criticisms of the senator’s hold by the president yet.“The Republican Party used to always support the military but today they’re undermining the military,” Mr. Biden said. “The senior senator from Alabama who claims to support our troops is now blocking more than 300 military operations [sic] with his extreme political agenda.” Mr. Tuberville, who has expressed annoyance with the fact that neither Mr. Schumer nor the Pentagon has budged, maintains that he wants the policy to be changed before he lifts his hold.Other Republicans have claimed that Mr. Schumer is refusing to bend to Mr. Tuberville’s hold in order to keep the issue in play politically. The Senate could go through nominations one by one if Mr. Schumer arranged for it, though it would be a lengthy process.“He can put some up” for a vote, “and I think that’s what he should do. But I think he thinks it plays politically for them, I guess,” Senator Capito told Punchbowl News. “I don’t know why else he wouldn’t put someone up.”The final issue looming over Congress’s return is appropriations, including the government funding bills Congress is supposed to pass by September 30 and the Agriculture Appropriations Bill, colloquially called the farm bill.In terms of government funding, Congress is supposed to pass 12 separate appropriations bills before September 30 in order to avoid a government shutdown. As they have in the past, they could also pass a stop-gap funding measure to extend the deadline.Baked into the debt ceiling deal, however, is a provision that would automatically cut government spending by 1 percent across the board if the appropriations bills are not passed by the end of the year. When Congress returns to session after the August recess, it will only have about a month to sort out a solution to this issue.In terms of the farm bill, House Republicans are looking to attach a litany of amendments, including provisions that would seek to reform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, sometimes called “food stamps.”House Democrats have positioned themselves against such provisions, and, much like with the NDAA, the Senate will have its own version of the bill that is unlikely to have the same slate of amendments as the eventual House version.

Congress Skips Town With Major Battles Looming Over Conservative Amendments to Funding Bills

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