Shutdown Risk Rises as U.S. Congress Stalls on Stopgap Bill

(Bloomberg) -- The risk of a brief U.S. government shutdown over the weekend rose Wednesday with congressional Republicans and Democrats split over a short-term spending bill needed to keep agencies running and some GOP lawmakers threatening a holdup to protest vaccine mandates.

Majority Democrats are looking to extend current agency funding into January or later given the impasse with Senate Republicans on full-year fiscal 2022 spending bills. While party leaders expressed confidence that the differences would get resolved in time, they have yet to schedule any action on a stopgap bill.

Current funding for the government expires on Friday. Democrats said they have not gotten a proposal from Republicans on how long a stopgap should last and there are growing concerns that a faction of conservatives will attempt to trigger a shutdown to block funding for President Joe Biden’s initiative requiring large private employers to either mandate vaccinations against Covid-19 or provide weekly testing. 

There were hints Wednesday afternoon that the standoff over vaccine mandates could be resolved by allowing a simple-majority vote on an amendment to the stopgap bill that would remove funding to implement the vaccine mandate. 

“I think that would be a very good resolution,” Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said.

Democratic leaders had not yet weighed in, but a similar amendment failed on a party-line vote during debate on the last short-term spending bill.  

“I can’t imagine we would walk back the safety precautions,” House Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, said. He called any attempt to defund the government over vaccine mandates “nonsensical.” 

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that he thinks there will be no gap in government funding. “We won’t shut down,” he said.

Senate Hurdle

Meeting the end-of-week deadline will require cooperation from all Senate Republicans. Although there is likely enough support from GOP senators to pass a stopgap, any one senator can demand extra procedural steps in the Senate that can drag on for nearly a week. That could come from the effort by Cruz and a group of other GOP senators to link spending measure to blocking Biden administration’s workplace rule on vaccinations and testing.

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, who sponsored the vaccine amendment on the last stopgap bill, led a Nov. 3 letter signed by 10 other Senate Republicans pledging to oppose all efforts to implement the vaccine mandate, including by objecting to government funding bills. 

Marshall told reporters on Wednesday he’s open to an amendment if it can pass with 51 votes rather than the usual 60 votes required in the Senate. 

Another Republican, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, said he opposed the vaccine mandate, which he said has small businesses in his home state concerned. But he cautioned against a shutdown. 

“We should never be shutting the government down. Whenever that happens, the Republicans are left holding the bag or get the blame for it,” Braun said on Bloomberg TV’s “Balance of Power with David Westin.” 

Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville signed the GOP letter on the vaccine mandate, but said he doesn’t want a shutdown. The vaccine mandate is before several courts and that’s the best place to let this be fought out right now, he said.

The Senate is set to consider a measure brought by Republicans to rescind the workplace testing and vaccine mandate in the coming weeks. That Congressional review Act vote could be expedited to resolve the standoff, some lawmakers said.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he and McConnell were “having good conversations” about the stopgap and that he hoped the group of conservatives won’t stand in the way. 

“It’s always easy to say you want to shut down the government over something I care about, this one cares about, that one,” Schumer said. “If everyone did that we’d have chaos. We need to come together and keep the government open.”

Unity Test

Some House Republicans, led by the Freedom Caucus, also support the effort to shut down the government to prevent enforcement of any vaccine mandate, saying the policy infringes on individual liberties. But that group wouldn’t be able to delay action in the House and other Republicans aren’t inclined to oppose a stopgap funding measure.

“Probably because they think, somehow, creating chaos -- which they are masters of -- will hurt president Biden,” New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic caucus chair, said. “It’s not going to work. We’re prepared to act.”

A new stopgap measure is necessary because Congress has failed to pass any of the 12 annual appropriations bills needed to fund ordinary government operations for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Democrats and Republicans have yet to begin serious talks to resolve their differences on the bills, with Republicans demanding Democrats reject an array of policy provisions such as government funding for abortions before talks on funding levels begin. 

The stopgap measure puts agencies on autopilot, freezing in place program funding levels and forbidding new contracts, with few exceptions. 

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.