Congress Sets Up a Veto Showdown With Trump

By Yuval Rosenberg

Senate Passes One-Week Funding Bill to Avert Shutdown

The Senate on Friday approved a one-week stopgap bill to fund
the government and avoid a partial shutdown after midnight, buying
lawmakers more time to negotiate a coronavirus relief plan and
finalize a $1.4 trillion spending package for the rest of the
fiscal year.

The short-term spending bill, cleared by voice vote after the
House approved it on Wednesday, sends the bill to President Trump’s
desk. It follows an earlier extension of government funding through
December 11, which passed in September. Both stopgap measures were
made necessary because Congress has yet to enact any of the 12
annual appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began in
October.

Negotiations on the Covid aid package remain mired in
uncertainty — and the risk of a shutdown has just been punted to
the end of next week.

The Senate vote on the spending bill followed hours of
negotiations with senators who had threatened to hold up the bill,
Roll Call’s David Lerman
reports:

“Leaders beat back efforts to attach measures over military
policy, blocking lawmakers' pay during a budgetary impasse, and
offering a new round of tax rebate checks to households during the
COVID-19 pandemic. …
“Another holdup was averted when Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,
relented on his push to strip troop withdrawal language from the
unrelated defense authorization bill. And Sen. Bernie Sanders,
I-Vt., backed off a threat to hold up the bill if it didn't include
rebate checks of $1,200 per adult and $500 per child.”

Sanders pushes for stimulus checks: Sanders has teamed up
with GOP Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri to push for another round
of stimulus payments, and the two senators
warned Friday that they will continue to press for
a vote on the checks next week. “If I have anything to say about it
— and I guess I do — we’re not going to go home for the Christmas
holidays unless we make sure that we provide for the millions of
families in this country who are suffering,” Sanders said on the
Senate floor.

What’s next: Negotiators have just days left to finalize
the full-year omnibus spending bill and write the legislation, or
another stopgap measure will be needed. Senate Appropriations
Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) reportedly
said that the spending bill likely won’t be
finished until next week and that the main sticking point remaining
involves how to handle $12.5 billion for a Department of Veterans
Affairs program that gives some veterans access to private
care.

Congressional leaders still hope to attach a coronavirus relief
package to the spending legislation, but the two parties remain
split over key elements of that plan. Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-KY) on Friday reiterated his call for dropping
contentious provisions covering aid to state and local governments
and liability protection from pandemic-related lawsuits from the
package, but Democrats again dismissed the suggestion, insisting
that it was critical to support states facing budget crunches.

Defying Trump, Senate Passes $741 Billion Defense Bill

In defiance of a veto threat from President Trump, the Senate on
Friday easily passed the $741 billion National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021.

Following an overwhelming 335-78 result in the House earlier
this week, the Senate’s 84-13 vote provides more than the
two-thirds majority needed to overcome a veto, should Trump choose
to reject the bill.

The president has issued numerous veto threats on the NDAA,
which defines spending levels and sets priorities for defense on an
annual basis. Trump has demanded that the bill include a repeal of
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which some
Republicans say allows tech firms to censor conservative voices.
Other provisions, including a requirement that military bases that
honor Confederate leaders be renamed, have also been cited by the
president as reasons he would issue a veto.

Senate maneuvering: In a rare break with the White House,
the bill had the backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-KY), who said he “would encourage all our colleagues to vote to
advance this must-pass bill,” despite its faults. McConnell brought
the bill to the floor for a vote following a delay created by his
fellow Kentuckian, Sen. Rand Paul, who protested a provision in the
bill that limits the president’s ability to remove troops from
Afghanistan.

The 13 senators who voted against the bill were split between
the parties. The Republicans were expressing support for the
president, according to
The New York Times, while the Democrats were
protesting the topline spending number. Three senators —
Republicans Lindsey Graham and Mike Rounds, and Democrat Kamala
Harris, the vice president-elect — did not vote. The two Republican
lawmakers facing runoff elections in Georgia, Sens. David Perdue
and Kelly Loeffler, voted in favor of the bill, raising questions
about Trump’s support for their reelection campaigns in the weeks
ahead.

In an odd twist, support of the bill by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK),
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was connected to
the recently announced deal that normalized relations between
Israel and Morocco. According to
Axios, Inhofe’s defiance of Trump’s demand to use
the NDAA to repeal legal protections for tech firms led to the
president embracing international agreement, which had been put on
hold due to Inhofe’s opposition.

What’s next: Trump must decide whether to sign or veto
the bill. Should he veto it directly, lawmakers would have to vote
again to override the veto, with the House going first. While the
vote this week suggests Congress will have plenty of votes for an
override, the outcome is not guaranteed, with some lawmakers likely
flipping one way or another in response to political pressure.

Another option is a pocket veto, in which Trump would
simply allow the bill to expire unsinged after 10 days (excluding
Sundays). The outcome of that maneuver depends on whether Congress
is still in session; if so, the bill automatically becomes law, but
if not, the bill expires. “That means,”
said The Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian,
“unless Trump signs the bill into law swiftly, Congress could be
forced to stay in session through Christmas, when lawmakers are
usually out of town.”

Column of the Day: Skip the Stimulus
Checks

Conservative Bloomberg columnist Karl W. Smith argues that as
Congress debates another Covid-relief package, it should skip a
second round of stimulus checks, not because they make no sense but
because other divisive provisions — including liability protections
for businesses, aid for state and local governments and a federal
boost to unemployment insurance — are more important.

“From a purely economic perspective, the right solution is easy:
all of the above,” Smith
writes. “From a political standpoint, however,
that’s unrealistic. Including all four provisions would push the
overall price tag to
more than $1 trillion, a red line for a crucial
bloc of Republican senators. Ideally, those senators would realize
that the risks of doing too little right now far outweigh the risks
of doing too much.”

Since Republicans show no sign of giving up their objections to
spending more, the stimulus checks should go and lawmakers should
focus on protecting the most vulnerable workers, Smith says. “What
should concern Congress are those Americans who, through no fault
of their own, are unable to work amid the pandemic,” he writes.
"Leaving these workers without crucial support will only fuel a
backlash against the lockdown measures that are necessary to
minimize the effect of what is (hopefully) the last wave of the
pandemic. Economically and morally, Congress’s most important task
is building a bridge for these workers between now and when a
vaccine is widely available.”


Read the full column at Bloomberg.

Quote of the Day

“Mutual aid between unemployed people can only go so far.
People are donating $5 to each other’s GoFundMes in a perpetual
circle just trying to survive.”

– Lighting designer Stephanie Freed, quoted in a
New York Times piece on the “slow moving disaster”
of the coronavirus recession. Freed told the Times she hasn’t
worked since March, and her unemployment benefits from the state of
New York ran out weeks ago, leaving her with only the federal
pandemic extension as a source of income.

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