Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the Senate will vote on a House-passed bill to fund the military, with only days to prevent a government-wide shutdown.
“The Senate will take up an uncontroversial measure that passed the House with a comfortable bipartisan majority,” he said Tuesday.
But absent a larger deal on lifting the budget caps, Senate Democrats are expected to reject the House’s defense funding bill, which will require 60 votes to overcome a procedural hurdle. {mosads}
The vote comes as the House is expected to take up a separate stopgap bill that funds most of the government through late March, but would fund the Pentagon through the end of September.
That bill, known as a “cromnibus,” is also considered dead on arrival in the Senate absent a larger deal.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that it would not get the 60 votes needed.
“As I’ve said many times before, a cromnibus will not pass the Senate,” he said.
Schumer and McConnell are continuing negotiations on reaching a deal to lift the spending caps for both defense and domestic programs, as lawmakers have said for weeks that they are close.
Schumer told reporters on Tuesday, as he was leaving McConnell’s office, that the two had a “good meeting.”