US Congress tries to keep gov’t lights on

The good news is that it doesn’t look like a bitterly polarised Washington will stumble into another government shutdown.

But as Democrats controlling the House unveil a stopgap, government-wide spending bill to keep the lights on and pay the troops, there’s scant evidence that power sharing in the Capitol will produce further legislative accomplishments anytime soon.

The measure is set for a vote this week and would keep the government running through November 21 and buy time for action and negotiations on $1.4 trillion in annual appropriations bills. Some items can’t wait and will be included, like accelerated funding for the 2020 census and $20 million to combat Ebola in Africa. President Donald Trump also appears likely to win authority to continue bailout payments to farmers harmed in the crossfire caused by his aggressive trade policies against China.

Since the temporary spending bill is the only must-do legislation on the immediate horizon, lawmakers are using it as a locomotive to haul other priorities into law. That bundle of provisions, negotiated behind closed doors, offers plenty of evidence of Capitol Hill’s chronic dysfunction.

It’s not just that the Democratic-controlled House and GOP-held Senate can’t agree on big issues like infrastructure, guns and healthcare. They also can’t agree on lower-tier items that typically pass by wide margins, such as short-term extensions of the federal flood insurance programme and the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance export deals important to large manufacturers such as The Boeing Co.

The House and Senate banking committees are responsible for legislation to reauthorise both the Export-Import Bank and the flood insurance programme, which is particularly important to the real estate sector in coastal areas, but there’s been no progress, so temporary extensions of the two programmes have been attached to the interim spending bill.

Meanwhile, a bundle of healthcare-related provisions, such as Medicaid payment rates for hospitals that serve mainly lower-income communities, is catching a ride on the temporary spending bill, according to a spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-NY.

no favours for trump

Democrats are deferring a showdown over Trump’s border wall, which sparked a 35-day partial government shutdown at the turn of the year. Democratic leaders opted against trying to use the bill as a way to take on Trump controversies like cutting military base projects to pay for his US-Mexico border wall. But they’re not granting Trump any favours either, denying provisions such as the flexibility to build new border wall segments.

A new bipartisan report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released Tuesday found that this year’s shutdown and a more widespread 2013 shuttering of federal agencies cost taxpayers about $4 billion, mostly for back pay for workers who did not work during the shutdowns. Almost 57,000 years of worker productivity were lost, according to the report by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Chris Coons, D-Del, contributing to piled-high trash at national parks, a suspension of consumer product safety inspections at US ports, and delayed certifications for new aircraft.

An early draft of the stopgap measure, circulated by Lowey, did not include Trump’s request for maintaining funding for the farm bailout, but talks Monday appeared headed toward a bipartisan compromise that would allow the Agriculture Department to keep issuing checks to farmers.

AP