Will Bipartisan Opposition Kill the Cromnibus?

Will the cromnibus—the $1.1
trillion spending bill intended to fund the government through next
September and avoid a government shutdown—actually pass?

The general
assumption yesterday was that the law would make it through the
House today with votes from both sides of the aisle.

But after lawmakers spent the day pouring over the
newly-published text of the proposal, the fate of the massive
spending bill is now in doubt: Some conservatives are upset because
the bill doesn’t block President Obama’s executive action on
immigration, and some liberals don’t like a provision that alters
the way Dodd-Frank regulates derivatives. Opposition from both
parties might end up killing a bill that was supposed to pass with
bipartisan support. 

GOP complaints that the bill doesn’t block Obama’s immigration
action tend to conveniently ignore a rather significant problem:
Congress doesn’t have the power to block Obama’s action through the
appropriations process (the cromnibus is mostly a combined
appropriations bill). As Rep. Hal Rogers, the Republican chair of
the House Appropriations Committee,
explained last month, “the Appropriations process cannot be
used to ‘de-fund’ the agency” that is tasked with carrying out the
action. The agency can fund its work through user fees without
approval from Congress—and could even do so in the event of a
government shutdown.

(The idea that the immigration action can be stopped by
defunding closely resembles the idea that went around last year
that Congress could stop Obamacare by defunding it. In October of
2013, the government shut down; Obamacare’s exchanges crashed on
opening, but not because Republicans had taken it out through the
budget process.)

The objection to the cromnibus from the left has to do with a
relatively obscure rule in Dodd-Frank regulating derivatives known
as the
swaps push-out provision. Under the rule, some types of
derivatives would have to be moved to financial entities that
aren’t protected by government backing. The change included in the
cromnibus would allow some of those derivatives to stay in house.
For more details, the Republican Study Committee’s legislative
bulletin is
worth reading. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) makes the case for
the change here.

The liberal objection to the bill, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
is basically that it defangs the financial regulations in
Dodd-Frank. Complicating liberal opposition, however, is that

the White House came out in favor of the cromnibus today,
noting that it didn’t like the derivatives provision but was
supportive overall.

What we’re seeing, then, is a test of White House influence over
the Democratic party. The administration wants the cromnibus to
pass; there are a number of Democrats who would be content to let
it die.
According to Politico, Democratic House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has voiced strong objections to the
derivatives rule change, “has privately mused that a three-month
continuing resolution might actually be better for Democrats.”

That would not necessarily mean a shutdown, however. If the
cromnibus spending bill falls apart, House Republicans have some
backup plans, including a three month continuing resolution (CR),
which would punt the funding fight into the next Congress, or
perhaps a one-week extension allowing more time to get a vote
together before the end of the year. (Republicans reportedly
said
this afternoon that the three-month CR is the go-to
alternative.)

At this particular moment, though, it’s all up in the air. The
House is currently in recess, which means a vote on the cromnibus
has been postponed, although GOP leadership still says a
vote will likely happen sometime today.