Capitol agenda: Lawmakers nearly at the funding finish line

Congress is on track to avoid another shutdown, but it needs to clear several hurdles in a short amount of time in order to beat its month-end deadline.

The pressure is on the House to pass four of the most challenging spending bills Thursday — to fund the departments of Defense, HHS, Labor, HUD, Transportation, Education and Homeland Security — then bundle them up with the two-bill package the chamber previously passed to fund Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations.

Senators will then have one week to take a big swing at passing all six bills before sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk.

Passing all 12 annual appropriations bills would be a stunning feat for lawmakers and leadership — especially in such a bitterly divided Congress. Here’s what they’ll have to deal with first:

— Spotty attendance: Speaker Mike Johnson’s barely-there majority could pose a problem come Thursday, when the House is expected to vote along party lines to tee up the rule vote allowing the final package of spending bills to come to the floor.

This dynamic could be further complicated by the fact that House GOP leaders will allow a passage vote for the Homeland measure that’s separate from that of the other funding bills in recognition of its divisiveness.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said the legislation does not include some of the broader policy changes Democrats proposed, like preventing DHS from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens or from deploying personnel from other agencies to conduct immigration enforcement.

While Republican leaders expect the other bills to pass with broad bipartisan support, Homeland will likely be a tight vote. House Democrats plan to discuss their position on the DHS bill during their closed-door caucus meeting Wednesday morning.

— Any hard-liner opposition: House Freedom Caucus members told POLITICO Tuesday night they are combing through all the earmarks included in this funding package after previously vowing to work vigilantly to block money for projects they don’t like.

“There’s always trepidation when it comes to earmarks,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) said Tuesday.

Conservatives are also digging through the details on the health care legislation that bipartisan, bicameral leadership hopes will sail through as part of this funding measure. Many Republicans who worked on the deal feel confident that the policies designed to crack down on pharmacy benefit managers, and the extension of several public health programs, will make it across the finish line. But don’t rule out complaints from fiscal hawks at the last minute.

“I’m fine largely,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told reporters Tuesday night. “But I don’t know, I got to look, see if there’s anything objectionable.”

— Time crunch in the Senate: The Senate is in recess this week, but it is due to return Monday — if travel back to Washington isn’t derailed by snow this weekend. At that point, there will be just five days until the Jan. 30 deadline, and leaders will need to get all 100 senators on board with fast-tracking passage of the final six-bill package. That’s assuming the House, which is scheduled to be in recess next week, passes it without incident.

Senate leaders may have to offer amendment votes to get holdouts on both sides of the aisle to come on board, which could quickly become a slippery political slope — or they risk dragging out procedural votes beyond the funding cliff.

What else we’re watching:   

— Clinton contempt vote: The House Oversight Committee votes on two measures at 10 a.m. Wednesday over whether to recommend holding Bill and Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas to testify in the panel’s Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Keep an eye on Democrats, who will have to decide whether they will side with Republicans to advance the contempt resolutions to the chamber floor — where, if adopted by the full House, the consequences for the Clintons could be as dire as imprisonment by the Trump DOJ. One person granted anonymity to share internal party dynamics said it was looking like most Oversight Democrats will vote “yes.”

— House vote on mining CRA: The House will consider a resolution Wednesday afternoon that would overturn the Biden administration’s ban on new mining near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters under the Congressional Review Act. A House aide granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics said to expect a nail-biter.

— New crypto text landing: Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) is preparing to release an updated draft of his panel’s portion of a major cryptocurrency bill Wednesday. It comes after the senator postponed a previously planned markup to allow bipartisan discussions to continue around the so-called market structure measure.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Benjamin Guggenheim, Jordain Carney, Josh Siegel, Hailey Fuchs, Meredith Lee Hill and Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.