Senate Clears Government Funding Hurdle Through December, Blanche Confirmation Still in Doubt

The Senate cleared a bipartisan procedural hurdle this week on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government at current levels through December 11, according to the Associated Press via PBS News. That's nearly two months before the actual funding deadline of September 30, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, says that's the point.

"There's been enough uncertainty this last year," Thune said, according to Fox News. "Unfortunately, I think through two government shutdowns that extended for a long period of time, it's better for everybody if there's predictability, certainty."

He's not wrong about the shutdowns. The country has been through two of them under Republican control of Congress in the past year. The first ran 40 days over expired Obamacare tax subsidies that never got resolved. The second stretched more than 70 days after Democrats balked at a funding deal following the killing of Renee Nicole Good by immigration enforcement agents in Minnesota, which led Republicans to fund immigration enforcement without Democratic votes, according to Fox News.

Nobody in either party wants a third one landing in the middle of midterm campaign season. Polling showed neither party escaped blame for last fall's shutdown, PBS News reported, which is likely the real reason Senate Democrats and Republicans found a way to work together two months early instead of waiting until the usual last-minute scramble.

What's in the bill, and what got left out

The measure generally holds federal spending at current levels through early December. But the negotiating fight over exceptions tells you where the real disagreements sit.

Democrats say they blocked a White House request for $1 billion to build so-called "Trump-class" battleships, according to PBS News. They also say they secured language preventing the administration from shifting funds out of other programs into Border Patrol operations. The House had already passed its own version without those White House-requested carve-outs, and senators spent recent days hashing out which exceptions from the administration's wish list would survive.

That's a legitimate legislative win for Democrats if the details hold. Neither the battleship money nor the funding-transfer restriction is a small thing. A billion dollars for warships is a lot to strip out of a stopgap bill. Restricting the administration's ability to move money into border enforcement without new authorization is a real check on executive discretion, whichever side of the immigration debate you're on.

Republicans still fighting Republicans

Even with Democratic cooperation secured on the broader bill, the GOP has its own internal mess. Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina is pushing to strip a provision that would delay a ban on certain hemp products, according to CBS News. Budd's stated concern is cannabis consumption among minors, a reasonable worry given how loosely regulated some hemp-derived products have become. That fight alone has been enough to gum up leadership's plans to speed the broader agenda toward a vote.

Blanche's confirmation hangs by a thread

While the funding bill moves, Todd Blanche's path to attorney general looks rockier. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has already said she'll vote no, according to CBS News. Republicans can only lose one more vote given Mitch McConnell's prolonged absence, and two other Republicans willing to break with the party in the past, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, haven't said which way they'll go.

Democrats, unsurprisingly, aren't rushing to speed up a confirmation vote for a nominee they oppose. That leaves Blanche's fate genuinely uncertain heading into the days before recess.

What's still stacked up

Beyond funding and Blanche, Thune is also trying to move a Russia sanctions bill, a bipartisan college athletics measure, and a stack of executive branch nominees before senators leave town, according to CBS News. There's also the House-passed budget resolution the White House wants as the first step toward a reconciliation package for Pentagon funding and farm aid, one that would bypass Democratic votes entirely.

Thune's spokesperson said that without a deal to speed things along, the agenda could push the Senate's business "well into next week," according to CBS News. Thune himself put it bluntly: he wants as much cleared now as possible, because when senators return in September, it's "going to be a mad rush to Election Day."

The unresolved question isn't whether the funding bill passes. It's whether Republicans can settle their own hemp dispute, whether Murkowski and Cassidy break for or against Blanche, and whether any of the rest of Thune's list gets finished before senators head home for five weeks.