EXCLUSIVE — Republicans are already preparing for the next set of spending bills to get bogged down on the Senate floor and have a creative workaround to avoid that fate.
Appropriators are weighing whether to pair money for the Pentagon and other agencies with House legislation sanctioning the International Criminal Court, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Under that scenario, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) would bring forward the ICC bill, which passed the House in January, and then attach the spending legislation on a later procedural step. Doing so would allow leadership to overcome a Senate rule that lets any one senator object to bundling two or more spending bills into a package known as a minibus.
The idea originated with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, but Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL), another appropriator, has more recently been raising the idea with her GOP colleagues.
A source familiar with the discussions cautioned that using the ICC bill was just one option under consideration. In the past, leadership has found other ways to accommodate senators and, if all else fails, could always suspend Senate rules with a two-thirds vote.
Still, the strategy suggests that appropriators are already gaming out the end of the year and expect to run into at least some resistance. Thune plans to jump-start floor action as soon as Tuesday on the Pentagon bill, along with three others funding the Labor, Health, Transportation, and Justice departments.
The spending bills would be the first considered since senators voted Monday to reopen the government through January.
“I think it’s definitely serious,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), a senior appropriator and member of GOP leadership, said of discussions to use the ICC bill, though she also called the conversation a “little premature” as Congress works to get past the shutdown.
“We just got to get over this hump and then see where we are,” she added.
Leadership had some trouble in July, when the Senate began to bundle the first of 12 full-year spending bills into a minibus.
Thune had to hold a separate vote on money for the legislative branch due to objections from Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), who wanted to go on the record as opposing its spending levels. That bill was then packaged with two others to fund the Veterans Affairs and Agriculture departments, demonstrating one way leadership could address subsequent issues.
Appropriators were unable to add funding, however, for two other agencies — the Commerce and Justice Departments — due to an objection from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who wanted to force the Trump administration to build the FBI’s new headquarters in Maryland, as had been the plan under former President Joe Biden.
As part of the next minibus, appropriators now plan to attach funding for those two agencies.
Members of the Appropriations Committee hope to pass the next minibus by Jan. 30, when a short-term funding patch will run out and Congress will again face the prospect of a government shutdown. But senators are also sober-minded about the odds of quick progress.
The first minibus passed the Senate in August, but it wasn’t until about 40 days into the shutdown that the House and Senate reached a compromise to send the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk as part of a funding deal.
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“We’ll move as fast as we can so we’re not waiting until the Jan. 30 deadline,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), an adviser to Thune, told reporters on Monday evening. “But you guys have been here long enough — we’ll probably be having this conversation Jan. 28.”
As for the ICC sanctions, Senate Democrats blocked the legislation in January, asking for changes to the text before it was brought back to the floor. The bill, spurred by the arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would punish ICC officials who investigate or detain any U.S. citizen or the citizen of an American ally.