CONGRESS’ SPENDING PLAN NEXT WEEK Congress essentially has one week left to finish its work to fund the government. Here’s how we expect that week to play out — and a bit on the potential fallout after. Weekend text: Appropriators, who are now working in a bipartisan manner, are predicting text will be released sometime this weekend. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the House Appropriations Committee ranking member, told reporters today: “I think that we will get something posted this weekend, maybe Sunday night.” We’re also hearing chatter about a Republican conference call this weekend, where GOP leadership could present their Plan B to members. They would then move for an early vote next week, which DeLauro told us she expects to move under “suspension,” meaning it could bypass conservatives on the Rules Committee and get to the floor more quickly, but the package would need to clear a two-thirds threshold to pass the House. House timing: We are hearing a Tuesday-Wednesday vote. Expect the number of Republicans opposing the bill to jump up from the 14 who opposed Speaker Mike Johnson’s previous plan. “I expect there will be more no votes on the Republican side on the clean CR. … We haven’t addressed the spending issue,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), chair of the Republican Study Committee. But with Democratic support it should still pass fairly easily, and then it heads over to the procedural morass known as the Senate. The Senate: Senate appropriators have openly said they prefer a CR that ends later this year, rather than the House’s original six-month version. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has insisted he doesn’t want any partisan gimmicks in the bill, so the “clean” rendition now coming from the House will be well-positioned for relatively quick movement in the Senate — though there will likely still be some wrangling over amendments for a day or two. Still, Schumer on Thursday filed cloture on a bill that could act as a legislative vehicle for a CR in the Senate, a backup plan in case the House fails to send a funding bill over. Text for a continuing resolution would need to be swapped into the bill via a substitute amendment, setting the table for a passage vote later in the week. Conservative blowback on Johnson: There is a group of conservatives who won’t be happy with this plan but, besides voting against it, they aren’t yet telegraphing how they plan to protest it. Still, it’s not great news for Johnson, who will need their support in just a few weeks if he wants to continue leading the House GOP. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, remarked: “For them to continue spending at levels that are nearly $2 trillion in deficit spending and we don’t get anything in return? I don’t think that’s what the American people want.” Another acute threat Johnson has to watch is Donald Trump, who has called for a shutdown if a certain voting proposal isn’t included (and it won’t be). Johnson even traveled Thursday night to a Trump rally, where he spoke with the former president about his spending plan. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a conservative who opposed both Johnson’s original spending plan and plans to vote against the upcoming one as well, said this outcome was inevitable. He also said the situation was “poorly handled” by Johnson, and said former Speaker Kevin McCarthy would’ve done better. “If you look at Mike Johnson's popularity out in the country, it has gone down considerably. But also, it depends on what Trump thinks of Mike Johnson,” Massie said. “I think the only way Mike Johnson really gets reelected speaker is with the line line from Trump, should Trump win the White House." — Olivia Beavers and Ursula Perano GOOD EVENING! Welcome to Inside Congress, the play-by-play guide to all things Capitol Hill, on this Friday, Sept. 20, a day when the House had a rare unanimous vote, passing a bill that will direct the Secret Service to provide the same level of protection President Joe Biden has to Trump and Kamala Harris. STOPGAP STICKING POINTS Top appropriators are confident they’ll emerge from this weekend with plans for a bipartisan short-term spending fix in hand, a mid-December end date and some amount of disaster aid. But there are several funding add-ons still causing daylight between Democrats and Republicans that must be hashed out. Republicans are pushing for a “skinny” stopgap, as evidenced by the scarce extra cash included in Johnson’s failed six-month spending and SAVE Act plan. Democrats are pushing for as much as $24 billion in disaster aid, for example, while Johnson’s plan included $10 billion. The White House has also asked for $15 billion to deal with Social Security staffing and customer service issues, as well as $12 billion to address a fiscal 2025 budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs — both of which weren’t included in Johnson’s plan. Republicans don’t seem keen on including either in this spending patch. But the lack of that money is less of an issue in a three-month continuing resolution, compared to Johnson’s proposal that would have federal agencies limping along with static budgets through the end of March. Under a three-month stopgap, lawmakers will have time to address any major funding needs by the end of the calendar year. “We're going to try and keep everything clean. So it's going to be as minimal as possible,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Friday. “Things are going well, and people want to keep it as clean as possible. So nobody’s drawing any lines in the sand. The idea’s just to get it done, get us the space and time we need, let the elections play out and go from there.” Lawmakers have additionally been discussing “hundreds of millions” of dollars for the Secret Service, according to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). But members are studying whether the ability to shift money around and spend faster would be sufficient to address the agency’s needs. One small bipartisan area of agreement: The White House requested, and Johnson included in his six-month bill, nearly $2 billion for Navy submarines. — Caitlin Emma, with help from Jennifer Scholtes NONPROFITS CRY FOUL ON TERRORIST BILL More than 100 nonprofits on Friday sent a letter to Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, raising concerns about a House bill that they say would give the executive branch too much power over shutting down nonprofits. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) outlined his worries about the bill in committee last week, saying it could give “one person, single-handedly, who could be under the orders of a president, the right to make an authoritarian decision to shut down a non-profit.” But the House Ways and Means panel unanimously passed a provision that enhances the executive branch's power to strip the tax status of nonprofits that support terrorist groups. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.), a cosponsor of the bill, said in the markup that the measure would help “dismantle the financial network of terrorist organizations across the globe and prevent bad actors from taking advantage of our tax code.” A spokesperson for Doggett also flagged that the Texan is still looking to amend the bill. And a Ways and Means spokesperson disputed the claims in the letter and said there was no unilateral authority to shut down a nonprofit in the bill. “The Secretary of Treasury has to provide notice to the suspected organization as well as explain what materials or support were in question,” the spokesperson said. “The organization then has recourse in four ways to address it, including review by the IRS’s Independent Office of Appeals.” The vehicle: The bill’s Ways and Means sponsors attached it to a popular bill that the Senate has passed to prevent the IRS from assessing penalties on freed American hostages for not paying taxes while they're imprisoned. The letter is urging House members to vote down the bill and instead just pass the Senate bill without the nonprofit provision. The Ways and Means spokesperson said that the Senate version of the hostage bill had technical and other errors that would make implementation more difficult if passed as is. “If this bill were to become law, the Secretary of Treasury could strip a US nonprofit of its tax-exempt status without providing the nonprofit a meaningful opportunity to defend itself before a neutral decisionmaker,” said the letter, which was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the NAACP, the League of Conservation Voters and more. “The potential for abuse under H.R. 6408 is immense as the executive branch would be handed a tool it could use to curb free speech, censor nonprofit media outlets, target political opponents, and punish disfavored groups across the political spectrum.” — Daniel Lippman
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