The Senate is facing a looming deadline to pass a stopgap government funding measure to avert a brief shutdown, as coronavirus relief talks appear to be crumbling.
The Senate has until midnight to pass the continuing resolution approved in the House this week, which then must be signed by President Trump to prevent a shutdown. The short-term measure extends the government funding deadline to December 18, giving lawmakers only one week to negotiate a larger spending bill and resolve their differences over a relief proposal and an annual defense spending act.
Senator Rand Paul objected to swift passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday, preventing the Senate from passing the bill — which has already passed in the House — with unanimous consent. Senators had hoped to pass the NDAA before the end of the week, but Paul, a Republican, has said he will only drop his opposition if GOP leadership agrees to hold a vote on the bill on Monday, which would require senators to go through procedural motions.
Paul's filibuster of the NDAA on Thursday pushed the Senate to remain in Washington through Friday, limiting the time it has to pass the continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
"We're not going to get NDAA until probably the weekend, but the CR has to get done tomorrow," Senator John Thune, the Republican whip, told reporters on Thursday. Even if the Senate does pass the NDAA with a veto-proof majority, as the House did, Mr. Trump has still threatened to veto the bill, meaning that Congress may have to stay in Washington to override the bill later in December.
Paul isn't the only senator whose actions could hold up passage of the stopgap funding bill. Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Senator Josh Hawley proposed adding an amendment to the must-pass legislation in an attempt to force a vote on providing Americans with a second round of $1,200 direct checks. Although Hawley told reporters on Thursday that he would not attempt to block the continuing resolution this week, Sanders did not rule it out.
"We will play it by ear. Let me just repeat: I will do everything I can to make certain that we do not leave here until that bill is passed," Sanders told reporters on Thursday, the Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, promising negotiations between a bicameral, bipartisan group of lawmakers appear to lack support from Senate leadership. The group introduced a $908 billion framework which includes $160 billion for state and local aid and a temporary liability shield for companies and institutions. The state and local funding is critical to Democratic support, while the liability protections are a priority of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
But McConnell's staff communicated to other congressional leadership staff on Wednesday that the majority leader does not believe that any deal reached by the group on state and local aid and liability protections would be acceptable to Republicans, a senior Democrat familiar with the conversations told CBS News.
Lawmakers have left the door open to continuing talks through late December, even as several relief programs and policies are expected to expire after Christmas. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she would want any relief bill to be attached to an omnibus funding bill, but that requires that omnibus to be ready by the December 18 deadline.
"In order to have the COVID added to omnibus, you have to have an omnibus, and so we're working dual tracks on that," Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. "I would hope that it would honor the December 18 deadline, but we can't go before the package is ready and the votes are there, as well as the fact that people do want to get home for the holidays, such as that is. But what's more important is that we get the job done for the American people before the holidays."
More than 290,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and over 15.5 million have contracted the virus.