March 17, 2014

SENATE TO SHORTEN PENDING CONTINUING RESOLUTION TO NOV. 15

By ExchangeMonitor

Senate Democrats are planning to pare back the length of a Continuing Resolution that is expected to fund the government starting Oct. 1, setting the stopgap funding measure’s expiration date at Nov. 15 rather than the Dec. 15 deadline established in a House version of the bill passed last week. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill by this weekend, amending the expiration date and stripping out controversial House provisions that would have defunded the Affordable Care Act. The House will have to vote again on the amended legislation by Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown.

The Senate plans to maintain the funding rates established by the bill, which would limit government spending at a rate of $986.3 billion, which is slightly less than the current, post-sequestration level. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation program would be limited to spending at approximately FY 2012 levels, though an anomaly allowing the NNSA’s weapons program to spend at the level of the President’s FY 2013 request ($7.58 billion) is being carried over from the current Continuing Resolution.

Senate Democrats said the shorter term CR would provide more impetus to pass omnibus spending legislation that could also replace sequestration for two years. “I am for a short-term CR, so my goal would be that in December we are voting on an omnibus, and that we are voting to cancel sequester for two years,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said. “So I am looking for a clean CR, a short-term CR that gets us, say from sometime in November to December, to accomplish the omnibus part and the cancellation of the sequester.”

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