The deadline of funding government by this Friday is almost certainly blown, with a short-term funding bill likely. While outgoing House Speaker John Boehner gifted the nation a Republican House that extended the debt ceiling and agreed to new spending levels with his departure, he left a mess of a Republican conference for Paul Ryan, and a mess of issues still to be resolved.
Omnibus spending bills are notorious vehicles for Congress to try to work its will outside of the normal legislative process, by attaching policy riders and slipping in all kinds of lobbyist wish list items. It's the best opportunity they have to get some of these things enacted because of the sheer number of issues at play. The more things they pile on, the more bargaining points they have: "Give us a ban on Syrian refugees, and we won't try to defund Planned Parenthood," might be a current example.
TPM details the five broad areas of contention in the current negotiations, where backroom deals are sure to create plenty of problems.
First, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying get even more money into political campaigns, "attempting to do away with spending limits for the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, as well as their congressional offshoots like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee." That would put more establishment money into congressional campaigns, which would in turn benefit incumbents. For that reason, tea party-types in the House are vehemently opposed, as are Democrats on the principle that there's plenty of wealthy donor money in politics anyway.
That’s just the beginning of the fights between Republicans and Democrats, and among Republicans too, though.
A second, even bigger hornet's nest is all the things Republicans (and some Democrats) would like to to roll back the Dodd-Frank financial reforms and regulations that have come out of it. High on their wish list is neutering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by making it a board like the Federal Elections Commission—a toothless group hamstrung by partisan politics. Republicans also hope to prevent a new proposed regulation from the Department of Labor that would require retirement advisors have a fiduciary duty to their clients, closing a loophole that allows advisors to direct people to investments that might not be best for their money because the advisor gets compensated when they sell these products. There's also a possibility that they will try to slip in a rider that would "scale back the Financial Stability Oversight Council's ability to monitor to risk the financial institutions that are not banks (insurance companies, asset managers, etc.) pose to the economy." So yes, once again Republicans are proving their fealty to Wall Street over Main Street.
The Syrian and Iraqi refugee ban is a third problematic issue for negotiators. Democrats have said they will refuse to support an omnibus that includes the restriction. At this point, it looks like House leadership has decided they'll try to pass a stand-alone bill that would reform the visa program that allows nationals from nearly 40 countries to come to the U.S. for a few months without obtaining a visa. On both sides of the aisle, members want to reform this program to more carefully review would-be visitors. House leadership has settled on a stand-alone vote on Tuesday, but the Senate might want to include it in the omnibus.
Here's kind of a random fourth issue: how meat is sold. Country of Origin Labeling requirements force retailers selling meat to label the country it came from, and there's momentum in Congress to repeal it. That's because since the labels starting appearing, Mexico and Canada have been selling less meat here. The World Trade Organization just announced that those two countries could begin imposing tariffs on the U.S. because of it. This could pit rural members against everyone else, and since rural senators have such disproportionate power, they could prevent the repeal.
Finally, there's an effort to lift the prohibition on the export of U.S. crude oil. Republicans want it lifted, Democrats are considering it, but "conservatives fear GOP leaders will give Democrats too much in exchange for lifting the four-decades-old prohibition, making negotiations more complicated than navigating the usual fault lines in energy politics." So here's another Republican rift. Democrats would agree to ending the band provided they get something in return, possibly Republicans agreeing to leave out policy riders they've threatened to weaken environmental regulations.
Those seem to be the key hangups at the moment. But there are a raft of other issues that can always rise up again—net neutrality and Planned Parenthood defunding to name just two. Additionally, there's the big second bill they have to pass before the end of the year—tax extenders. These are all the tax breaks that are supposed to be temporary but that Congress votes to extend every year. Some of them are really important—breaks for low income families, etc. Some are total corporate giveaways, and at the moment, Republicans want to give away $667 billion to corporations over the next decade. It's not clear as of now whether the tax extenders will be wrapped into the omnibus or left separate.
There's one good thing, though, that will be included. That is unless Mitch McConnell is totally full of shit, again. He promised 9/11 first responders that funding for the Zadroga Act, which grants their health care, would be included in the transportation bill last week. He reneged, and pulled the provision. After some serious shaming by Jon Stewart, he's promised to include it in the omnibus. We'll see.