Congress is leaving town without solving two major debates. A look at the unfinished business

WASHINGTON – The days before Christmas are often a last-minute scramble for Congress as members work long hours to strike an annual spending deal before heading home for the holidays. But this time, lawmakers are pushing their biggest battles to the new year. 

When Congress resumes work on Jan. 8, they’ll have less than two weeks to fund transportation, housing, agriculture and energy programs by Jan. 19. Then they'll have only three additional days with both chambers in session before Feb. 2, when they need to fund all other agencies and avert a government shutdown once again. 

However, appropriators in the House and Senate don't agree on how much they want to spend, gumming up the bicameral work necessary to build and pass a budget.

They’ll also have a fight over funding for Ukraine and the border-security policies tied to it. Even as Senate negotiators stay in town to work out a framework deal, divisions remain between both chambers and within the Democratic Party that will make additional aid far from guaranteed.

Here's what you need to know about Congress' unfinished business.

A budget quagmire

As part of the debt ceiling agreement brokered this spring, President Joe Biden and then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to spend $1.59 trillion on the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October. That deal, codified as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, included an additional $69 billion in nondefense spending that was not included in the law itself.

Since then, the House replaced McCarthy with Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Now, many of the House's most conservative members are pushing Johnson to drop the $69 billion they call “gimmicks," but which got many Democrats to sign onto the debt ceiling deal.

Johnson said earlier this week that House Republicans would stick to the $1.59 trillion but reject the $69 billion, which would cut nondefense spending by more than 9% below 2023 levels.

"The Senate has been projecting and writing well above (the FRA) by billions of dollars. That's not what the law says," Johnson said Tuesday. "As the rule-of-law team, we're going to follow the law."

That puts the House out of step with both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, where they are more aligned on adhering to the original deal struck between McCarthy and Biden. The short timeframe to work out the differences will make it challenging to meet the deadlines Johnson set in the unique "laddered" funding extension approved in November.

If they can't come to an agreement, Johnson has pledged not to pass another short-term extension. Instead, he will support a "full year" extension through the end of the 2024 fiscal year in order to "refocus Washington on fiscal year 2025."

But that’s not as simple as it sounds, due to a provision of the debt ceiling deal intended to keep negotiations on track: If Congress can't pass all 12 spending bills by the end of April, there will be an across-the-board government spending cut. It was originally intended to bring both sides to the table, but new budget estimates show the cuts would disproportionately impact nondefense spending.

Johnson has also floated the idea of putting forward a full-year extension that includes some changes that would further hit nondefense spending if the final appropriations bills don't have "good conservative wins."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday that Democrats would not support a full-year funding extension because it would trigger painful cuts. "Get back to the full deal that you cut, that you voted for, and let’s do our jobs," she urged Johnson.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the chief Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told USA TODAY on Monday that the two sides remained far apart and also urged Republicans to commit to the original deal.

"In the absence of (House Republicans) making a determination to follow the budget agreement the way they did in the Senate," she said, "we are on a trajectory to shutting the government down."

Foreign aid and border security

While House members are wheels-up for the holidays, the Senate remains in town as a group of leaders negotiate a border security package with the White House.

Earlier this year, Biden proposed an aid package that would include about $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian assistance and $14 billion for U.S. border policies.

Republicans in both chambers – who include some skeptical of offering additional foreign aid to Ukraine – said they couldn't support the funding without new policies aimed at stemming migration at the southern border, including making it harder for migrants to qualify for asylum and easier to deport people who overstay their visas.

Senators of both parties, representatives from the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been working to reach a deal on policy changes that could get the funding through the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York asked the upper chamber to stay in Washington to vote on a shell bill that will carry the supplemental into the new year.

However, Republican senators have said they won't vote to advance a deal with only a framework instead of a full bill. And Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a member of the negotiating group, said Thursday that Republicans would not put forward a deal that doesn't have the support of a majority of Republican senators.

"It would make no sense," he said. "Similarly, if we had all 50 Democrats vote for it that would be problematic because that means we haven't negotiated to a point where it truly is" securing enough concessions.

House Republicans have been insistent that the deal should hew closely to the border security bill they passed earlier this year.

A source close to House leadership told USA TODAY that Johnson doesn't feel he must take up what the Senate agrees to, but that they are looking for substantive immigration changes that can justify aid that many House Republicans oppose.

The debate is coming as battle positions between Ukraine and Russia is cementing and winter is setting in. The Biden administration has warned it is running out of funding to help Ukraine fight off Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops.

"We know the world is watching. We know autocrats like Putin and (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping) are hoping for us to fail," Schumer said Thursday. "So we need to try with everything we have to get the job done."

Contributing: Francesca Chambers