Although congressional leaders are months late in completing the fiscal 2020 bills, the deal came together with stunning speed in recent days. Top appropriators had only agreed in late November on how to divvy the funding among the dozen annual spending bills, leaving just over three and a half weeks for negotiating specific budgets and demands for the thousands of federal agencies and programs those measures fund.

“A lot of hard work brought this appropriations process back from the brink,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged in announcing the Senate’s plan to pass the bills.

“A lot of hard work brought this appropriations process back from the brink,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

Ongoing friction over whether to fund the president’s border wall was the chief reason spending negotiations had reached the “brink” of demise to begin with.

Before the two parties struck a compromise to funding the U.S.-Mexico barrier at about $1.4 billion, top lawmakers acknowledged that Congress was possibly headed toward a full-year stopgap that would have kept federal funding static through September, despite the fact that earlier this year they had clinched a bipartisan budget deal that allows spending to be increased by $49 billion during the current fiscal year.

It was the threat of a yearlong continuing resolution that propelled top negotiators to ultimately make the trades necessary to arrive at a compromise that could pass both chambers and earn Trump’s endorsement.

The Senate Appropriations Committee's top Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said this week that he "had to say no to some on the far left" who made demands during endgame spending negotiations and that his counterpart, Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), "had to say no to some on the far right."

“But we’ve got legislation that’s going to pass overwhelmingly,” Leahy noted ahead of the passage votes.

Frozen funding levels and spending uncertainty have already hurt federal agencies over the last two and a half months. For the military, operating on a continuing resolution forced the Pentagon to delay maintenance for assets like Navy ships and to hold off on starting new contracts.

Sen. Patrick Leahy said this week that he "had to say no to some on the far left" who made demands during endgame spending negotiations. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo

There are "two timeless truths" about appropriating in a divided Congress, McConnell said on the floor this week. “First, neither side will ever get what they would consider to be perfect bills. But second, full-year funding definitely beats drifting endlessly from CR to CR."

Under the spending bills expected to become law by week’s end, defense funding will be hiked by $22 billion over the next nine months, while another $27 billion in extra funding will be spread among the nation’s non-defense agencies.

Because of the budget deal Trump signed in August, federal funding limits will be even higher for the fiscal year that begins in October. Those fiscal 2021 caps allow an extra $2.5 billion for the military and another $2.5 billion bump for non-defense programs.

Actually appropriating that money is likely to be a challenge again next year, however, particularly considering the fiscal 2021 deadline falls one month before voters will head to the polls to decide whether Trump will return to the White House for a second term.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who chairs the spending panel that funds DHS, is already forecasting another round of rocky spending negotiations, more than nine months before federal funding will expire again. Congress is “now at the point where it’s never going to be easy” to get the two parties to agree on appropriations amid feuding over the border wall, the senator said.

“Next year is a presidential election year. This is the president’s big issue that we’ve been very supportive of and locked horns on. So I don’t think it will change,” Capito said this week. “Could be more intense.”

