Congress faces raft of issues in spending deadline to avoid shutdown

WASHINGTON — For Congress, the next two weeks are all about figuring out how to keep the government open. But that debate is about far more than Planned Parenthood and Syrian refugees.

The federal government is running on a stop-gap funding bill that expires Dec. 11 because Congress has not yet passed legislation to fund federal agencies for 2016.

The headlines are largely consumed with the demands of conservatives that any spending bill prohibit federal funding for Planned Parenthood and blocks Syrian refugees from resettling in the U.S. Both of those provisions would force a showdown with President Obama, who would undoubtedly veto a bill with those riders attached.

But those are not the only policy disputes at stake. The appropriations panels in the House and Senate have generated funding bills for all the federal agencies containing hundreds of riders barring the use of federal funds for all kinds of things. Many of these are partisan issues, but some have passed with bipartisan approval, and many are legacy issues that have been attached to spending bills for years.

For example, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill that would bar the secretary of the Interior from listing the sage grouse as an endangered species. Another bill bars the IRS from using any money to “target groups for regulatory scrutiny based on their ideological beliefs.” Another spending bill bars any domestic enforcement of the international Arms Trade Treaty, a global deal to manage import and export of conventional weapons that conservatives believe could be used to regulate handguns in the United States.

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Not all the riders address Republican concerns. A provision in the financial services spending bill would prevent the federal government from penalizing financial institutions that offer banking services to businesses that sell marijuana legally in those states that allow it. Under current laws, banks are hesitant to serve businesses that sell marijuana, forcing most of them to conduct transactions in cash.

“Forcing businessmen and businesswomen who are operating legally under Oregon state law to shuttle around gym bags full of cash is an invitation to crime and malfeasance,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.  “It’s time to let banks serve these legal businesses without fearing devastating reprisals from the federal government.”

Democratic leaders have insisted for weeks that the spending bill be free of what Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called "partisan poison pill riders." But "partisan" is in the eyes of the beholder, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has repeatedly said that the final bill will include policy riders, just as prior spending bills have. For example, the draft bills contain a rider nearly 20 years old that bans the Centers from Disease Control from studying the health effects of gun violence.

Beyond the riders, Congress is now weighing changes in funding for hundreds of programs across the federal government, many of which have not been reconsidered in years. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that handles the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, noted his panel boosted funding for National Institutes of Health to conduct research on Alzheimer's, anti-microbial resistance and other priorities, but it did so by cutting funding for the National Labor Relations Board and other programs more popular with Democrats.

It is important that Congress produce “a budget that reflects this year’s needs,” Blunt told USA TODAY earlier this fall. “And it's even more important when the American people have sent a different group to be in charge of the Congress,” as they did in 2014 by electing a Republican majority in the Senate for the first time since 2006.

CONTRIBUTING: Brian MacIver, Medill News Service