WASHINGTON (AP) — Before President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress can enact much of their legislative agenda, they have to deal with some unfinished business — completing work on the current budget year’s spending bills. It’s a task that by all accounts is not going well.
The current stopgap measure lasts through March 14. After that, without congressional action, there would be a partial government shutdown.
Five weeks is an eternity when it comes to resolving spending bills in Washington. But Trump’s first weeks in office have escalated tensions between the two parties as the new administration reshapes agency priorities and dismantles existing programs without congressional approval.
A look at where the talks stand:
Republicans accuse Democrats of abandoning negotiations
Republican and Democratic leaders of the two appropriations committees in Congress were holding spending bill talks in late January; aides said the two sides were committed to getting a deal done. But optimism has faded in recent days.
“Obviously, the Democrats are not in a good place right now, so they walked away from talks. But it’ll have to resume,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Thursday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., gave a similar assessment, contending that comments by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York and some of his colleagues made it seem as though they are “trying to set up some sort of government shutdown, which I think is very unfortunate. We were negotiating in good faith and trying to get the topline number, but so far as I know, they’ve been sort of unresponsive the last two days or so. So I hope we can get back to it.”
Rep. Tom Cole, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that he heard from Democratic lawmakers as recently as Thursday so he did not believe they were walking away from talks.
“But, we’re not making the progress I would hope,” said Cole, R-Okla.
Democrats dispute GOP leadership’s characterization
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said “that is false” in response to the assertion that Democrats have withdrawn from negotiations.
“The Democrats have made their offer. We have not walked away from the table,” DeLauro said.
Jeffries told reporters that DeLauro “has been trying to get Republicans to respond to her for weeks.”
“I’m hopeful that Republicans are actually willing now to sit down at the table and reach a spending agreement, in the best interest of the American people, not in the best interest of their billionaire donors,” Jeffries said.
Tensions over topline spending levels
Under terms of an agreement that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., worked out with then-President Joe Biden, spending for defense and nondefense would increase by 1% for the current budget year, which began Oct. 1. That would bring the tallies to about $895.2 billion for defense and $780.4 billion for nondefense.
Congress set the spending levels to grow below the rate of an inflation, at the insistence of Republicans, as part of a package that also suspended the debt limit so that the federal government could continue paying its bills. Democrats say an agreement is an agreement.
“That is the path forward that will allow everyone to come together to reach a spending agreement that meets the needs of the American people,” Jeffries said.
Republicans don’t see it that way.
Cole said Democrats are having a hard time adjusting to the reality of Trump being in the White House and Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.
“We have to remember the deal they are trying to enforce is when we had a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate. We don’t have those anymore,” Cole said. “And in particular, the president doesn’t feel bound by an agreement made by another president that didn’t go down on his watch.”
Cole said that “there’s only one signature that matters right now and it’s not Joe Biden’s anymore.”
Democrats wary as Trump and Musk revamp federal government
Democrats are struggling to keep up and provide a unified response to Trump’s first weeks in office as government workers are pushed to resign, entire agencies are dismantled and Elon Musk’s team from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency gains access to sensitive information of countless Americans.
They are worried about how current government services are being affected, with Democrats accusing the administration of blocking hundreds of billions of dollars in previously approved funding. Those concerns are also swaying their thinking as they approach the spending bill negotiations.
“The level of trust is at the lowest I have ever seen it here in Congress,” said Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It is up to our Republican colleagues to stand up to this and assure us an agreement and a law is real.”
DeLauro said Democrats need assurances that Republicans will follow through on whatever spending agreement the negotiators reach.
“You won some. I won some. We lost some each. But we have a deal. And that’s got to be it. Those assurances have to be made,” DeLauro said.
Plan B
If lawmakers fail to reach agreement on a full-year spending measure, then it’s possible that they could also pass another temporary measure to keep the government open for a few more weeks or months while they try to work out their differences.
Such stopgap measures, called continuing resolutions or CRs in Washington parlance, generally fund government programs and agencies at current levels.
“I don’t want a CR,” Cole said. “But I certainly prefer a CR to a shutdown.”
