Election year politics and the aftermath of the Orlando shootings have slowed floor progress on the FY17 appropriations process, but trouble looms. Combined with the abbreviated election-year calendar and other factors, Congress and the President will likely be unable to meet the October 1 fiscal year deadline for enacting all 12 individual spending bills that collectively fund the federal government. That means a temporary stop-gap funding bill will be needed to keep the government operating past October 1 until the regular FY17 legislation is finalized.
Despite unprecedented progress this spring by the House and Senate Appropriations committees in reporting FY17 spending legislation to the floor of their respective chambers, floor consideration has slowed. In a strange turn of events following the Orlando nightclub shooting, the usually popular Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) bill, the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill and an emergency Zika virus funding measure got caught up in the highly-charged politics of gun control. Acrimony between the two parties following a "sit-in" protest by House Democrats spilled over into House and Senate negotiations on the final MilCon-VA/Zika funding bill, while gun control amendments in the Senate slowed the CJS bill to a crawl. Even if the two parties are able to resume regular order on FY17 legislation, the shortened election-year calendar will delay action on the vast majority of spending legislation until September. The House and Senate are in session in July for fewer than ten legislative days before breaking for the presidential conventions and annual August recess. The five-week September session will likely be devoted to finalizing a small number of the least controversial spending bills, as well as passing a temporary stop-gap funding measure needed to keep the federal government operating in the new fiscal year.
Determining the length of the temporary stop-gap funding measure may not be as simple as it seems due to demands by some in Congress to leave final FY17 decisions until next winter when a new President and Congress take power. Because the election results will not be known until November 8, a more likely scenario is a temporary stop-gap funding measure until the third week of November when Congress is in session to organize for the 115th Congress and decide on the parameters of a post-election lame duck session. At that time, Congress will determine how it will proceed on the FY17 appropriations legislation.
Takeaway: Although the fate of the popular MilCon-VA bill is linked for now to partisan differences on Zika funding, look for efforts by the House and Senate Appropriations committees to finalize the least controversial appropriations measures in September. The bulk of the spending measures will likely be addressed after the November election. Because both committees were able to report all 12 of the FY17 spending bills out of committee much earlier in the process than is usually the case, stakeholders and affected parties have more time to assess differences between the two chambers and make their case to Appropriations Committee members and staff well before members are forced to make final decisions in the fall.
