Congressional leaders are daring their members to vote against the grand plan to avoid a shutdown at the end of January.
Why it matters: In a Congress defined by the silent treatment and name-calling, the leaders have made the calendar their ally.
- Sure, there's some caterwauling from Democrats about missing their best opportunity (for now) to reform ICE. But it doesn't seem loud enough to derail the whole package.
- "I'm not worried about the Senate," House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters. "I think we're sending them what they think they can pass."
State of play: Appropriators released the details of the last four spending bills on Tuesday morning. The House passed a two-title bill to fund the Treasury and State, as well as the IRS and Federal Trade Commission, last week.
- Once the final minibus — which funds Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; Homeland Security; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development — is passed by the House, the Senate will need to act when it returns next week.
In a creative twist, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) plans to use the rule he'll need to bring the four-title minibus to the floor to create a single six-title bill for the Senate to vote on — take it or leave it.
- Johnson also plans to give Democrats a separate floor vote on the controversial Homeland Security funding.
- "We're having a conversation in the caucus meeting about it tomorrow," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told Axios when asked Tuesday how he and leadership would handle that vote.
The other side: In the Senate, opposition to the strategy is being mostly led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
- "Democrats have no obligation to support a bill that not only funds the dystopian scenes we are seeing in Minneapolis, but will allow DHS to replicate that playbook of brutality in cities all over this country," Murphy said on X.
- Some senators, like Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), had been urging appropriators to include their legislation in the remaining four-bill minibus.
- But they aren't threatening to tank the minibus, even though their bill — the ROTOR Act — wasn't included.
