Senate Passes Minibus, Efforts to Pass Second Minibus Fail

On Thursday, the Senate sent President Barack Obama a package of three spending bills, which includes a provision that keeps the government funded through Dec. 16. The bill was approved over the objections of mostly conservative Members who charged the measure was too costly, contains three appropriations bills: “the Commerce, Justice and science appropriations bill; the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill; and the Agriculture, rural development, and Food and Drug Administration appropriations bill.” However, efforts in the Senate to pass a second minibus have stalled and the Senate have moved on to discuss the Defense authorization bill.

The Senate was set to consider next year’s funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations on Tuesday,” but ended up punting on the bill due to a dispute over Cuba policy and a failure to agree on procedure.”Josh Rogin from Foreign Policy Magazine wrote that ”Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) don’t want any restrictions loosened on doing business with Cuba. They both spoke on the floor today against the Cuba provisions, along with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). But Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) spoke in favor of the Cuba provisions, which he had authored, because his state would benefit from the agricultural trade that loosening restrictions would bring.” While these senators don’t have a problem with the State Department’s budget, it has been caught in a crossfire because of the minibus, and now the State Department funding will be put off for months, as the second minibus failed, an will end up in a catch-all minibus or omnibus.