Congress Faced with Difficulty over $1.2T Package Funding

Congress is finalizing the approval of the $1.2 trillion government funding package that would become the biggest increase in federal spending in years.

However, several conservatives are resisting the package, saying that members from both parties will try and attach “poison pill” riders to the funding measure at the last minute.

But lawmakers are confident that they will be able to resolve any outstanding issues and attract enough bipartisan support to avoid a government shutdown by Friday’s deadline, The Hill reported.

“The decisions that need to be made still — there’s a lot fewer of them,” Republican Representative Tom Cole, a senior appropriator, told reporters Thursday. “I think we’ll get there. It depends on this weekend.”

Lawmakers have been attempting for some time to unlock the major spending boosts that were provided by last month’s budget deal in order to break the cycle of temporary funding patches that have been keeping the government from a long-term shutdown. The two-year budget deal that Congress passed in February puts additional $80 billion on defense spending and $63 billion on non-defense spending for fiscal 2018.

According to The Hill, appropriators and their staff have been working around the clock to wrap up work on the funding package, which would fund the government through the end of September. 

The House plans to vote on the bill on Wednesday which will leave the Senate with only a few days time in order to pass the bill and avoid a government shutdown on Friday at midnight. A brief government shutdown happened last month as a result of Republican Senator Rand Paul slowing down Senate proceedings over federal spending concerns.

But lawmakers are confident that won’t happen now, adding that the time has come for the CR (Continuing Resolution) pattern to be stopped.

“I think the real pressure here is probably from the defense hawks, who really went to get out of the cycle of CRs and sequesters,” Cole said. “So I think that actually pushes us through in some other areas that might normally cause you a problem.”