With the House having passed its final batch of appropriations bills, it is now up to the Senate to pass the spending package or risk sending the federal government into a partial shutdown.
Despite the pressure to keep the government open, however, a significant number of Senate Democrats and Republicans have complaints about the spending bills.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., one of the eight Democrats who voted to reopen the government after the longest-ever shutdown in November, signaled his opposition to the spending package as a whole.
“If the Senate were to vote on these appropriations bills individually, I would support some of them,” Kaine wrote. “But the House is bundling six bills into a single package a week before a budget deadline and skipping town to try and jam senators into a single up or down vote.”
Kaine refers to the House Republicans’ use of procedural mechanisms to send the Senate four funding bills passed on Thursday combined with two passed the week before.
On Thursday, the House passed its last remaining appropriations bills to fund the government. The bills came out of conference, meaning they were the product of bipartisan negotiation between appropriators in the House and Senate.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., had applauded what he saw as a return to a “committee-led, member-driven approach” to funding where spending bills were approved by various House committees before coming to the floor for a vote.
This arrangement, however, will force Senate Democrats to vote for a larger package funding both items they oppose, such as deportations, and items they support, such as foreign aid projects.
Top Senate Democrat appropriator Patty Murray of Washington has already granted the homeland security funding bill her blessing, so Republicans may not need Kaine’s vote to pass it.
Senate Fiscal Hawks
There are already signs of dissatisfaction among the Senate’s fiscal hawks.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who voted against the November funding extension that reopened the government, has excoriated the earmarks in the package coming to the Senate.
“Just read the minibus Congress plans to pass this year. An unbelievable over $5 billion is going toward refugee welfare programs,” Paul wrote Tuesday on X after House Republicans unveiled their funding package.
“I am going to fight like hell to get this removed. In the meantime, call your Senators and tell them to vote NO, and to put an end to the refugee rip-off,” he added.
Paul has specifically criticized the renewal of funding both for refugee benefits and the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization some Republicans have criticized for promoting left-wing causes abroad.
Earmark Backlash
Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., filed an amendment to strike funding for earmarks in the package that passed the House Thursday, but his measure failed when 76 House Republicans joined with 215 House Democrats to vote against it.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., has expressed his displeasure with these earmarks coming to the Senate.
“Why are we giving $1 MILLION to the Met for new elevators or $375K to Jacob’s Pillow Festival?! How does that benefit you? I’m fighting to hold Washington accountable for how they spend YOUR MONEY, by stopping earmarks, so we can get our country back on track,” Scott wrote Thursday on X.
The bill funding the Department of Education includes a $375,000 earmark for “Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival,” an annual educational arts program in Western Massachusetts. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, both D-Mass., requested the earmark.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has also criticized the House’s slate of bills, writing Thursday on X, “With Republicans passing spending bills like these, who needs Democrats?”
The Senate is in recess until Jan. 26, just days before the Jan. 30 deadline to fund the government and avert a partial government shutdown.
