WASHINGTON -- Having dodged the immediate threat of a government shutdown, congressional Republican leaders are looking ahead to talks with President Barack Obama on a long-term budget pact.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that he and House Speaker John Boehner spoke with Obama recently and that he expects talks to get underway soon.
McConnell spoke as the Senate wraps up a debate he engineered on a temporary spending bill that would keep the government open while the negotiations stretch through the fall. The measure, expected to clear the House and Senate just hours before a midnight deadline today, would keep the government running through Dec. 11.
"The president and Speaker Boehner and I spoke about getting started on the discussions last week, and I would expect them to start very soon," McConnell told reporters.
At issue are efforts to increase the operating budgets for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies still under automatic spending curbs that would effectively freeze their budgets at current levels. Republicans are leading the drive to boost defense while Obama is demanding equal relief for domestic programs.
The conversation among McConnell, Boehner and Obama took place earlier this month -- before Boehner announced he was stepping down under pressure from tea party conservatives. Many of those same lawmakers want to preserve stringent "caps" on the spending bills Congress passes every year, and Senate Republicans are generally more eager to revisit the 2011 budget deal that put them in place.
Boehner's resignation announcement Friday followed unrest by some conservatives in his conference who wanted to use the pending stopgap spending bill to try to force Democrats and Obama to take federal funding away from Planned Parenthood.
Instead, Boehner and McConnell opted for a bipartisan measure that steers clear of the furor over Planned Parenthood and avoids the risk of a partial government shutdown -- over the opposition of most of the hard-line conservative Republicans.
Today's scheduled vote comes after a 77-19 tally Monday easily beat a token filibuster threat. The House also is expected to approve the bill -- stripped of a tea party-backed measure to take taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood -- before tonight's deadline.
Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas said no one raised objections to the plan in the Republicans' Tuesday morning meeting.
"There will be some objections, but this is going to go through," Rep. John Carter of Texas said.
Second-ranking House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland also said he expected the spending bill to pass, and he didn't expect any amendments that would cause Democrats to vote against it.
McConnell is under fire from tea party conservatives who demand that he fight harder against Planned Parenthood, even at the risk of a government shutdown. One of the Republicans' presidential aspirants, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, on Tuesday endorsed a partial government shutdown as a way to gain leverage over Obama.
"Why don't we start out with the negotiating position that we defund everything that's objectionable, all the wasteful spending, all the duplicative spending, let's defund it all and if there has to be negotiation, let's start from defunding it all and see where we get," Paul said in a Senate speech. "But it would take courage, because you have to let spending expire. If you're not willing to let the spending expire and start anew, you have no leverage."
Last week, Democrats led a filibuster of a Senate stopgap measure that would have blocked money to Planned Parenthood. Eight Republicans did not support that measure, leaving it short of a simple majority, much less the 60 votes required to overcome the filibuster.
"This bill hardly represents my preferred method for funding the government, but it's now the most viable way forward after Democrats' extreme actions forced our country into this situation," McConnell said Tuesday of the stopgap.
Republicans have targeted Planned Parenthood for years, but secretly recorded videos that raised questions about the organization's handling of fetal tissue provided to scientific researchers have incensed anti-abortion Republicans and put them on the offensive against the group. The group says it is doing nothing wrong and isn't violating a federal law against profiting from such practices.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who hopes to be his party's presidential nominee, took to the Senate floor after the vote Monday to denounce the Republican leadership. Cruz has had a rivalry with GOP leaders such as McConnell and Boehner, R-Ohio.
"You want to understand the volcanic frustration with Washington? It's that the Republican leadership in both houses will not fight for a single priority that we promised the voters we would fight for when we were campaigning less than a year ago," Cruz said.
Asked about the criticism, McConnell demurred.
"I try very hard to stay out of the presidential race," he said.
The White House weighed in Monday with a statement endorsing the stopgap measure since it would allow "critical government functions to operate without interruption, providing a short-term bridge to give the Congress time to pass a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year."
defense spending
Also Tuesday, House and Senate negotiators agreed on a $612 billion defense policy bill that restricts transferring terror suspects out of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and challenges the administration on the budget, drawing a veto threat from Obama.
The bill gives Obama the increase in funding he requested, but he's unhappy with the way lawmakers did it. The legislation authorizes an increase in defense spending by padding a war-fighting account with an extra $38.3 billion -- money that's not subject to limits Congress has imposed on military and domestic spending.
The measure would retain and, in some cases, increase current restrictions on transferring detainees out of Guantanamo Bay. It continues to ban the transfer of detainees to the United States or construction to house them on U.S. soil. It also calls on the White House to send Congress a plan on how it plans to close the facility and handle future detainees.
Moreover, it bans detainees from being transferred to Yemen, Libya, Somalia or Syria, although congressional staff members said it didn't appear the administration had any intention of transferring any to these volatile nations. Closing the prison is one of Obama's top goals, yet he has not sent Congress a plan on how to shut it down.
"There is still no plan on what to do and how to do it with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "If the administration complains about the provisions concerning Guantanamo, then it's their fault because they never came forward with a plan."
Among other things, the bill:
• Provides a 1.3 percent pay increase to service members
• Calls for government matching funds to new 401(k)-type plans, replacing a system that doesn't leave retiring troops with anything unless they serve 20 years.
• Authorizes lethal assistance to Ukraine forces fighting Russian-backed rebels.
• Continues support for Afghanistan's security forces and requires the president to report on the risks associated with his plan to draw down U.S. troops there. Obama announced in March that he would slow the troop withdrawal and maintain 9,800 through the end of this year in Afghanistan where the Taliban this week captured a strategic northern city.
• Increases from 4,000 to 7,000 the number of special immigrant visas for Afghans who assisted U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and now are facing threats.
• Authorizes the president's request of $715 million to help Iraqi forces fight Islamic State militants. It requires the Pentagon to report on whether the Iraqi government becomes inclusive of the country's ethnic groups and states that based on that report, the president can decide to arm Sunnis or Kurds directly.
• Authorizes $600 million for the U.S.-led program to train and equip moderate elements of the Syrian opposition force, but it requires the defense secretary to get congressional approval each time he wants to use money for the program.
• Restores funding for the A-10 close-air support plane and prohibits its retirement.
• Directs the defense secretary to issue a policy to empower individual post commanders to decide whether members of the armed forces can carry government-issued or personal firearms at military installations, Reserve centers and recruiting centers. This provision follows shootings in Little Rock; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Fort Hood, Texas.
• Extends the ban on torture to the CIA, a provision that pleased McCain, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.
"I'm glad the United States of America will never again to be able to do things that they did before, which was such a terrible stain on our national honor," McCain said.
McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, both acknowledged that the legislation does not solve the spending problems. But McCain insisted that is a budget fight that should not be fought on his legislation.
"I don't think we can wait till December to pass a defense authorization bill," Thornberry said. "I'm hopeful that we can pass this bill, and I'm hopeful that the president will agree to it."
He said the House would vote on the bill Thursday. A vote in the Senate has not yet been scheduled.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press and by Billy House, Erik Wasson and Terrence Dopp of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/30/2015