Senate appropriators have abandoned plans to mark up two spending bills Thursday that have become mired in a partisan dispute over abortion policy.

The Appropriations Committee announced it will postpone consideration of its fiscal 2020 Labor-HHS-Education bill and its State-Foreign Operations bill. As of Wednesday evening, the panel still planned to take up its Defense and Energy-Water bills at a full committee markup, along with a measure that would divvy up total discretionary spending among the 12 subcommittees.

The decision to scale back the committee’s Thursday agenda marked the latest blow to a delayed appropriations process as lawmakers scramble to avoid a government shutdown when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. None of the 12 annual spending bills have reached the Senate floor and a stopgap funding measure is being prepared to keep the government operating.

[Senate appropriators to begin spending sprint next week to avoid shutdown]

Tensions over the Labor-HHS-Education bill had already led the committee’s Republican majority to scrap plans for a subcommittee markup on the measure Tuesday. Democrats made clear they were preparing to offer an amendment at the full committee markup on Thursday that would block the Trump administration from enforcing a rule preventing federal grant money from going to organizations that provide abortions or offer abortion referrals.