WASHINGTON (AP) – A divided House is about to pass a $32 billion spending bill for the Interior Department and environmental regulations as Congress prepares to exit Washington for a seven-week recess, but the move seems to do little to advance GOP leaders’ hopes of fixing the Capitol’s shattered budget process.
The measure, now slated for a vote Thursday, is laced with a wish-list of GOP provisions to roll back Obama administration clean air and water regulations and faces a White House veto threat. Its advance comes as the GOP-controlled Congress is about to take a vacation extended by unusually early national political conventions.
GOP efforts to restart the annual budget process hang by a thread, pointing to yet another take-it-or-leave-it trillion-dollar-plus bill this fall to keep the government open weeks before the election. Wednesday’s measure would be just the fifth of the 12 spending measures to clear the House. In the Senate, an effort by majority Republicans to revive debates on the measures – which had languished under Democratic control of the chamber – hasn’t gone as well as hoped.
Democrats are poised on Thursday to again block the advance of the annual Pentagon spending measure over fears that Republicans would boost defense while keeping domestic programs frozen. And a much-needed bill to battle the Zika virus faces a Democratic filibuster Thursday as well over a GOP provision that would block Planned Parenthood from receiving anti-Zika funding.
“When they were in the majority, they didn’t want to pass appropriations bills. When they were in the minority, they don’t want to pass appropriations bills,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has been frustrated in his efforts to move the measures through. “I gave it every opportunity this year to succeed. We have spent weeks and weeks and weeks trying to get a regular order of process on appropriations through the Senate.”