The Senate has concluded its business for 2023 and will reconvene in January.
But the slow pace of negotiations over Ukraine funding, plus the unresolved question of spending levels for the fiscal year, mean the Senate will be thrown into a series of high-stakes battles as soon as lawmakers return.
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Senators were forced to come to Washington, D.C., at the start of their scheduled Christmas recess to close out unfinished business for the upper chamber but also to give negotiators more time to reach a compromise on border reforms.
Negotiators continued their work on a border security deal, which is needed to pass the tens of billions in aid for Ukraine requested by the White House, while the 60 or so members who actually showed up voted to confirm the 11 stalled four-star generals held over from Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) blanket hold on military promotions. The chamber also passed a short-term extension of the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority.
But members broke for the abbreviated week without a handshake agreement on the border deal, meaning the Senate would be punting a vote on the Ukraine bill until early January at the soonest.
A bipartisan working group of senators has spent weeks negotiating the border compromise, which Republicans are demanding for a defense bill that includes aid for Ukraine but also Israel and Taiwan. Negotiators on both sides have acknowledged the border measure is critical to passing the legislation, especially through the GOP-led House.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have fully supported the effort to combine Israel and Ukraine aid, and the two have backed the inclusion of border security as migrant crossings break record levels, though they differ on some of the policy specifics. Taiwan assistance was also included to help broaden support for the bill.
Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) have been leading the negotiations, which have centered largely on changes to federal asylum policy and how the Biden administration uses its humanitarian parole authority. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and the Biden administration have been heavily involved in the talks as well.
There have also been reports that the White House has offered to establish a new border expulsion law and increase mandatory detention rates as part of the negotiations, though no one from the Senate working group or the Biden administration has confirmed as much publicly.
Lankford told reporters this past week that negotiators have “a ways to go” to reach a deal. Neither he nor Murphy provided time frames, but a framework agreement is possible before the new year.
“Obviously, we need time for members to look at this before they vote. I have not been as focused on whether we’re releasing a framework before we’re releasing text,” Murphy said. “We have not made a decision on how we would announce the agreement and in what form that would come. But I’m just gonna keep working at it, try to get an agreement, and try to get text as quickly as we can.”
Despite the slow pace of negotiations, senators have expressed a great sense of urgency to reach a deal that could promptly pass the supplemental through both chambers.
The bill, which is expected to pass the Senate by a broadly bipartisan margin eventually, could face a tough path forward in the House without a major set of border policy changes. Even if Republicans were to secure concessions from Democrats in the current Senate negotiations, the deal would face considerable opposition from House GOP lawmakers who oppose Ukraine aid.
The bill is just one of the many priorities on the Senate’s to-do list when it returns next year.
In addition to finishing the border deal and subsequently passing the defense supplemental, the Senate needs to pass the rest of its appropriations bills ahead of the Jan. 19 deadline to keep the government open.
Senators don’t return to Washington until Jan. 8, giving them less than two weeks to pass their nine remaining appropriations bills, all of which passed through the Senate Appropriations Committee with broad bipartisan support over the second half of this year.
The Senate, of course, could attempt to negotiate over spending levels without the bills’ passage, and the compressed timeline makes that scenario more likely, but working through them in the new year would help the chamber’s negotiating position with the House.
The House and Senate have been inching toward a showdown over federal spending, with each chamber producing appropriations bills with different caps.
Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME), who lead the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote their bills using the levels agreed upon as part of President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal to avert a debt default in May.
As part of his larger effort to keep the right flank of his conference from ousting him as speaker, McCarthy permitted the House Appropriations Committee to write its spending bills with caps set below the agreed-upon numbers. The appeasement failed, and McCarthy’s early October ouster left the House paralyzed for three weeks as the GOP conference struggled to rally around a leader.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) eventually secured the gavel, and the chamber’s Republican appropriators went back to work on their partisan bills. There have been numerous bumps in the road, however, including when 19 GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats last month to block an effort to begin consideration of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill.
Republican hard-liners voted down the rule for several reasons, with several citing frustration with the speaker’s decision to pass a clean continuing resolution under suspended rules the day before.
The Senate passed its first trio of bills in early November following a monthslong effort to get it across the finish line. Senate leadership spent much of October negotiating to overcome dozens of holds on the bills, passed together as a minibus, and then staged a marathon of votes on the bill’s 41 amendments.
As for the remaining bills, the House and Senate could agree to another short-term continuing resolution, allowing them to punt for 30, 60, or 90 days while the bills’ differences are worked out, but Johnson has vowed not to do so.
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They could also pass a stopgap that goes through the rest of the fiscal year, though doing so would undermine the months of work put in by appropriators.
Cami Mondeaux and Reese Gorman contributed to this report.
