This week: Congress stares down government funding deadline

The House and Senate this week are staring down a Friday deadline to approve government funding and avoid a shutdown, but lawmakers must first work through a stalemate over a side-deal Democratic leaders struck with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) this summer.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) promised Manchin that he would pass permitting reform before October in exchange for his support of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress approved and President Biden signed into law last month.

But now, Republicans and some Democrats in both chambers are lining up against Manchin’s permitting reform legislation, putting the stopgap funding in jeopardy and increasing the possibility of a government shutdown.

Lawmakers have just four legislative days to work through the logjam and fund the government or else Washington will shut down — a situation that would have significant economic and political implications across the country. The Senate returns to Washington on Tuesday after taking off Monday for Rosh Hashanah.

On the House side, members are looking to take up a highly anticipated ban on lawmaker stock trading, capping off months of behind-the-scenes deliberations.

Congress scrambles to fund the government

Schumer told reporters late last week that he was confident Manchin’s permitting reform proposal would remain in the stopgap bill — which would keep the government funded at last fiscal year’s levels until after the midterms — but it is far from clear that the measure will have enough votes to make its way over the finish line.

Manchin unveiled the proposed text for his permitting reform last week. The measure, among other tenets, would limit the timelines for environmental reviews that are part of the approval process, direct the president to maintain a list of 25 energy projects of strategic importance for 10 years, and benefit a controversial natural gas pipeline that runs through West Virginia, the senator’s home state.

A number of Democrats and Republicans in both chambers are already lining up against the measure, making the math more difficult for Schumer.

On the left, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) have said they will vote against the continuing resolution if it includes Manchin’s permitting reform.

Seven more Democrats, plus Sanders, penned a letter to Schumer last week asking him to separate the two measures, but they did not go as far to say they would vote against a funding measure that contains the permitting reform.

Democratic Sens. Ed Markey (Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.) and Ben Cardin (Md.) and Sanders signed the measure.

And in the House, more than 70 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Democratic leaders earlier this month asking that Manchin’s measure not be included in the stopgap bill.

On the right, a number of Republicans are voicing opposition to the permitting reform, despite the fact that the party has historically supported such measures.

Republican senators are saying that Manchin’s reform measure does not go far enough, noting that to get more GOP support, significant changes have to be made to the proposal.

The legislation did, however, receive a key GOP endorsement last week when Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R), Manchin’s West Virginia colleague, came out in support of it.

The Senate is slated to hold a cloture vote Tuesday night on a “shell” House bill that will be the legislative vehicle for moving the government funding measure through the upper chamber. That vote is expected to pass despite the unknowns regarding the stopgap bill.

That roll call will kick off debate on a shell bill, which Schumer will then try to amend by adding the government funding — with or without Manchin’s permitting reform.

But with just four legislative days left before the shutdown clock strikes zero, Schumer is now facing a choice: honor his promise to Manchin and bring the stopgap-plus-permitting measure to the floor, which is at risk of failing, or separate the two and break his vow to the West Virginia Democrat.

Manchin made the case for his reform in an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” and denied that Republicans are opposing his legislation as retribution for the Inflation Reduction Act, which Manchin helped craft.

“This is not about me,” Manchin said. “My Republican friends, I’ve been working for 12 years with them, and I know their number one item that they’ve had, the number one priority they’ve had is permitting reform.”

“We can’t build anything in America. It takes five to 10 years. The developed world takes one to three years. And why should we so behind the developed world to bringing products to market, to be able to have the infrastructure to move energy around? And we’re asking people around the world to do things for us, we won’t do for ourself?” he added.

House eyes stock trading ban

With just three legislative days on its calendar before the midterm elections, the House this week is looking to take up a bill to ban lawmaker stock trading — which would help tame conflict-of-interest concerns.

The House is out of session Monday and Tuesday to mark Rosh Hashanah, but will return to Washington on Wednesday. Friday is the last day the chamber is scheduled to be in session before the November midterm elections. 

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, announced on the floor last week that the lower chamber “may consider” the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, this week, which is widely expected to include a ban on lawmaker stock trading.

Lawmakers have been hashing out details on a stock ban for months, particularly after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed support for the measure in February.

Last week, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, wrote a letter to colleagues laying out a four-part framework for a measure aimed at “Combating Financial Conflicts of Interest and Restoring Public Faith and Trust in Government.”

The first element of Lofgren’s framework is a ban on stock trading for “senior officials,” including members of Congress and Supreme Court justices.

Those officials, in addition to their spouses and dependent children, would be banned from trading stocks or investing in securities, commodities, futures, cryptocurrency and other similar investments. They would also be barred from shorting stocks.

Individuals under the purview of the ban would have to either divest their holdings or place them in a qualified blind trust.

Other tenets of the framework are aimed at increasing specificity of disclosures, increasing penalties for those who do not comply with requirements, and increasing transparency with the public.

Lofgren said she came up with a plan for the reforms after reviewing the more than 20 legislative proposals put forth on the topic.

“A number of bills that have been introduced to date address some of these issues and include thoughtful proposals, but no one bill addresses each of these four elements with this level of detail,” the California Democrat wrote in the letter.

“I will soon introduce legislative text for a bill built on this framework for reform,” she added.

Earlier in September, Pelosi told reporters that a lawmaker stock ban could come to the floor this month.

— Updated at 9:25 a.m.