Democrats Worry Republicans Will Burn Them Again on Government Funding

Democrats are debating their options about how to handle the upcoming government funding fight, given that Republicans may just renege on their bipartisan agreement and strip their desired spending a few weeks later. The recent fight to defund foreign aid programs and public broadcasting has left Democrats feeling burned. Senator Schumer faced a similar dilemma in March, when the GOP put a party-line spending bill on the floor that kept the government open through the end of the fiscal year. The deadline to fund the government — whether it be for the full year or just a few weeks or months — is September 30. In March, all House Democrats but one voted against funding the government. When it came to the Senate, it took 60 votes to begin debate in order to keep the government open. The Democratic base demanded their representatives stand up and fight to force a shutdown, though Mr. Schumer and eight other Democrats voted for the procedural motion, allowing the Trump-backed spending bill to pass. Within days, Mr. Schumer’s popularity within his own party crumbled, and one Senate Republican even joked that the Democratic leader was about as popular as a certain venereal disease. Now, he faces the same problem about whether to supply Republicans with the votes to move forward, only this time, the GOP has proved that it will defund programs previously approved by Congress. The rescissions process, which is what Republicans used to claw back funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, is not subject to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Senator Kaine, who yelled at the Republicans during the early morning vote to defund foreign aid programs, NPR, and PBS, tells the Sun that he has little confidence the GOP will stick by its word to keep the funding in place for programs favored by Democrats. “I want to do a deal, but I just want to do a deal with somebody who won’t undo it five minutes after we vote for it,” Mr. Kaine said Tuesday. “I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request,” he added with a laugh. “I think any appropriator — Dem or R — should want their work product respected and not undone,” the Virginia senator said. When asked by the Sun how he felt funding negotiations were going — considering the possibility of another rescissions bill looms — he made clear that he has little faith in his GOP colleagues. “There are assurances we can be given that will make me confident. As of right now, I’m not confident at all,” Mr. Kaine said. Mr. Schumer spoke about the funding negotiating process at his weekly press conference on Tuesday. He said Republicans’ unilateral use of rescissions has made things more complicated. “We Democrats want a bipartisan deal,” Mr. Schumer told reporters. “But the bottom line is, Republicans are making it much harder. Rescissions, impoundment, pocket rescissions directly undoes this. … You can’t say you want a bipartisan process, which [Senator Thune] said yesterday, and at the same time put rescissions on the floor, which is the antithesis of bipartisan.”A senior Republican lawmaker, Senator Cornyn, had a blunt message for his Democratic colleagues who are considering objecting to the funding deal due to concerns about rescissions: “Get over it.”“There are gonna be more rescissions packages coming, and there should be,” Mr. Cornyn told the Sun on Tuesday. “So, they just need to get over it.”A more moderate GOP member of the chamber, Senator Tillis, had a more sympathetic opinion about his Democratic colleagues’ concerns. “If they do a rescission on something that was foundational to a prior year-end spending agreement, then you’re not gonna get those folks’ support because they don’t know if you’re just agreeing to something that’s gonna be rescinded months later,” Mr. Tillis told the Sun on Tuesday. “That’s pretty straightforward.”The White House’s budget director, Russ Vought, has said that more rescissions bills will be sent to Congress in the coming weeks and months. Federal law requires that the administration be the branch that drafts the rescissions request, which Congress can then amend and vote on within a certain number of days. “We want to see how this first bill does. We want to make sure it’s actually passed,” Mr. Vought told CNN in June. “This is the first of many rescissions bills.”

Democrats Worry Republicans Will Burn Them Again on Government Funding

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