Congress Faces Daunting December Deadlines

By Yuval Rosenberg

Welcome back! Congress returns this
week to a slew of major deadlines, including the expiration of
federal funding now just four days away. Here’s what you need to
know.

Battles Over Biden Agenda and Budget Deadlines as Congress Gets
Back to Work

As Congress returns from its Thanksgiving break this week,
Democratic lawmakers face a daunting to-do list that includes
avoiding a government shutdown at the end of the week, advancing
President Joe Biden’s economic agenda and raising the federal debt
ceiling — and they have just a handful of legislative days left on
the calendar to get it all done before leaving town for the winter
holidays.

Here’s a rundown on some of the major items that Congress needs
to tackle in the next two or three weeks:

* Avoid a government shutdown after December 3: The most
pressing issue — the threat of a government shutdown when
short-term funding expires at the end of this week — may prove to
be the easiest problem to solve. With little time left to work out
the details of a full-year bill, lawmakers are expected to kick the
can down the road once again and pass a continuing resolution that
maintains current funding for a few more weeks. The main question
is how long the short-term funding bill will last, with Democrats
pushing for a stopgap that provides funding for just a few weeks,
in order to keep the pressure on Republicans to continue to
negotiate a longer-term package that contains elements of Biden’s
agenda.

Republicans say they want a short-term bill that lasts into
March or later. And while some bomb-throwers among the GOP are
saying the funding deadline provides a good opportunity to fight
Democrats’ spending plans — “Dec 3rd the government runs out of
money & the big push will be funding the Dems Communist agenda,”
Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted over the weekend
— negotiators are expected to come up with a compromise soon, with
late January or early February looking like a possible
endpoint.

* Authorize defense spending: The National Defense
Authorization Act has been lingering on a backburner for weeks, but
the Senate was expected to start pushing the $768 billion defense
policy bill forward on Monday. Republicans, however, signaled that
they would block a procedural vote as they press for more votes on
amendments to the massive legislation. “I will oppose cutting off
these important debates prematurely, when they have really just
begun,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on the
Senate floor.

The House passed its version of the bill in September, but the
Senate version has been delayed by lingering disputes. Issues that
still need to be resolved include pay increases for members of the
military, as well as amendments addressing a requirement for women
to register for the draft and a repeal of the 2002 authorization
for the war in Iraq. Another reason for the delay in advancing the
typically bipartisan bill was its inclusion of the $250 billion
U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which provides funds intended
to increase U.S. competitiveness with China. That bill will now be
addressed separately.

* Raise or suspend the debt ceiling: Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen has warned that the federal government may have
trouble paying all of its bills after December 15, though analysts
at the Bipartisan Policy Center — and at least one Republican
lawmaker, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — say that the so-called X-Date
could come weeks later, in early February. However, unless Yellen
changes her outlook, expect lawmakers to push for some kind of
solution to the debt limit problem in the next two weeks.

Negotiators have made little progress, though, and The Hill’s
Alexander Bolton
reports that Democrats and Republicans in the
Senate cannot agree on how to proceed. Senate Majority Leader
Charles Schumer (D-NY) does not want to raise the debt ceiling
through budget reconciliation, a time-consuming process that could
eat up a week or more of floor time in the upper chamber. At the
same time, McConnell has warned that Republicans will filibuster
any attempt by Democrats to vote under regular order, which would
allow them to raise or suspend the limit with a simple majority,
pushing the deadline past the midterm elections.

Most analysts agree that GOP lawmakers are pushing for the
political advantage they see from forcing Democrats to raise the
debt ceiling to a particular number rather than suspend it, with
the latter option not allowed under the rules of
reconciliation.

Expect this issue to heat up as the December 15 deadline
approaches. “The debt limit is the only leverage Republicans have
this whole Congress,” GOP strategist Brian Darling told The Hill.
“If they give it away and get nothing for it, it’s going to be a
huge embarrassment.”

* Complete the Build Back Better bill: The House passed
the roughly $1.7 trillion bill containing much of the president’s
agenda before Thanksgiving, and now the fate of the Build Back
Better Act lies largely in the hands of a few centrist Democrats in
the Senate, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten
Sinema of Arizona.

Manchin has expressed concerns about specific provisions in the
bill, including the expansion of paid family leave and Medicare
hearing coverage, as well as the possibility that additional
federal spending could contribute to the recent surge in inflation.
While Sinema has kept her concerns largely private, Manchin’s could
result in the bill being reduced in size and scope, and perhaps
delayed as the senator waits to see how the economy performs in the
coming weeks and months. While Schumer says that his goal remains
to pass the bill before Christmas, Manchin reportedly believes that

next year is more likely.

The state and local tax (SALT) deduction is another issue that
could delay the bill. Led by lawmakers from high-tax blue states,
the House included an increase in the SALT deduction cap from
$10,000 to $80,000, which would provide a tax windfall to some
high-income households. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), chair of the
Budget Committee, wants to impose an income threshold on the SALT
deduction cap so that the very rich do not benefit.

The Senate parliamentarian could be another hurdle for
Democrats. Relying on the budget reconciliation process allows
Democrats to proceed with no help from Republicans, but it also
opens their plan up to the threat of being overruled by the
Senate’s legislative judge, who can declare one or another
provision to be in violation of the requirement that a
reconciliation bill be directly related to budgetary issues.
Provisions related to immigration are of particular concern, with
the parliamentarian ruling that earlier versions involved policy
changes that fall outside the scope of the budget.

No Republicans in the Senate are expected to back the bill, and
GOP lawmakers are expected to pressure wavering Democrats to reject
certain provisions within it. “We have an entire Republican
conference who wants to do everything we can to defeat it,” Sen.
John Barrasso (R-WY) said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Biden Says Omicron Variant Is Cause for Concern, Not Panic

President Joe Biden on Monday cautioned Americans not to panic
over the new omicron variant of the coronavirus and urged them to
get their vaccine shots and boosters as the best defense against
infection.

“This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic,"
Biden said in a speech at the White House. “We have the best
vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and
we're learning more every single day. And we’ll fight this variant
with scientific and knowledgeable actions and speed. Not chaos and
confusion.”

The omicron variant has now been found in more than a dozen
countries. It hasn’t been found in the United States yet, but
Canada has reported at least three cases, the first in North
America.

As scientists
race to deepen their understanding of the highly
mutated version of the virus first detected in South Africa last
week, Biden acknowledged that the new strain — which he repeatedly
called “omnicron” — would arrive on our shores “sooner or later.”
But he promised to avoid any further lockdowns and emphasized that
Dr. Anthony Fauci, his chief medical advisor, and other experts
believe that the existing vaccines will continue to offer some
protection against severe disease.

"If you are vaccinated, but still worried about the new variant,
get our booster. If you aren’t vaccinated, get that shot. Go get
that first shot," the president said.

He added that his team does not believe that additional vaccines
will be needed and that “we have more tools to fight the variant
than we’ve ever had before” but said that his administration is
already working with Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to plan
for new versions of their shots if needed. He also urged Americans
to wear masks in indoor public settings.

A World Health Organization official told CNN Monday that data
on the severity and transmissibility of the new variant could be
available within days, though information about the effectiveness
of existing vaccines against variant will likely take longer.

Vaccine makers are racing to respond: Pfizer, BioNtech
and Moderna are
rushing to figure out how effective their vaccines
are against the new variant — and to determine if they can quickly
tailor them to better protect against it. The initial research
could take a couple of weeks, and omicron-specific shots could be
made available early next year. “We’ve mobilized hundreds of
people,” Moderna’s chief medical officer, Paul Burton, told the BBC
Sunday. “If we have to make a brand-new vaccine, I think that’s
going to be early 2022 before that’s really going to be available
in large quantities.”

What’s next: Biden said he would lay out a detailed plan
Thursday for fighting the pandemic and the new variant over the
coming winter months.

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ICYMI: Biden Nominates ‘History-Making Women’ to Lead Budget
Office

President Biden last week nominated Shalanda Young to lead the
White House Office of Management and Budget and Nani Coloretti to
be deputy director. Young, who was confirmed by the Senate to be
OMB’s deputy director, has been acting director of the agency since
March after the White House was forced to withdraw the nomination
of Neera Tanden. If confirmed by the Senate, Young would be the
first Black woman to head the budget office and Coloretti
reportedly would be one of the highest-ranking Asian American women
in the administration.

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