Eyeing the Exits, Senate GOP Expects Swift Spending Bill Passage

Senate Republicans huddled over lunch Friday afternoon in the Capitol to discuss strategy on the House-passed spending bill and other pending legislation, exiting the meeting with a resounding message: Let's get this done and get the heck out of here.

The House offered a helping hand Friday afternoon, extending a short-term continuing resolution that will maintain federal funding through Wednesday. That should allay any fear that If the Senate does not act on the 1,600-page omnibus spending bill, which has drawn the ire of some conservatives and liberals alike, the government will shut down.

Senate Democrats are still pushing for an agreement to finish the chamber's work Friday evening and then head home for the holidays, but Republicans could keep members in town through Monday when the omnibus will have to come up for a vote.

Based on the tune Senate Republicans were humming as they finished meeting early Friday afternoon, a quick resolution appears to be on the horizon.

The Senate's number three Republican, John Thune, exited the meeting predicting that members will quickly pass the omnibus spending bill and conclude the rest of their business for the year "sometime in the next day or two."

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn wouldn't share his whip count on the measure, but also had a favorable prediction after the lunch. "I have confidence that this will turn out well," he said, "and that we will get out of here hopefully rather sooner than later."

Rank-and-file Republicans seemed encouraged after the lunch as well. "Any hold you're seeing at this point is more likely somebody who's just trying to get a better reading of what the bill is about. ... Nothing to get panicky about," retiring Sen. Mike Johanns said after the meeting. "It's very, very possible that at some point when they're satisfied, boom, it goes."

Asked if he expected a deal to vote on the omnibus later Friday, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said: "Wishin' and hopin' and prayin' and plannin'."

Still, no agreement had yet been reached Friday afternoon as members headed to the floor to pass a defense authorization bill. All 100 senators will have to agree in order for the chamber to conclude their business before the weekend. But any individual senator could throw a wrench in the works, forcing senators to stick around Washington through part of next week. Given the additional time granted by the House, it is likely that the Senate would take the weekend off.

Border hawk Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama told reporters Friday that he will take advantage of procedural measures in order to respond to the president's actions on immigration, but would not say how long he intended to hold the omnibus bill.

Sessions said that he is working with Sen. Ted Cruz to force an immigration amendment onto the spending measure. Senate leadership and members of the Appropriations Committee have said that the bill will move forward without amendments, in order to avoid a prolonged floor fight over extraneous measures, but Sessions said he is in talks with leaders on both sides and is hopeful that he can convince them otherwise in the next few days.

"I don't want to delay the bill … I just think we ought to have at least an amendment process and moving on a bill that's going forward, which Sen. Reid does not prefer. … We want to pass good legislation and have a right to bring it up. And I think it's sad that the Senate has put us in this position," he said.

Sessions said that he believes a vote should come before Jan. 1 on the president's executive action.

Cruz broke a week-long silence with the press Friday, vowing to push for an "up-or-down vote" on the immigration amendment, regardless of his colleagues' desire to leave Washington for the year. "The relative timing is far less important than is the underlying substance and clarity of each senators views, he said.

Thune said Republican senators have much more leverage next year, when the next Congress convenes and they hold the majority.

"We're better served by doing the things that we have to do, taking that stack of legislation and disposing of it and then getting ready to fight the battles next year," Thune said.

But if the omnibus vote is delayed, Thune said, he did not believe it would last long. "I would think there's going to be an agreement struck," he said.

Republican leaders in the Senate did not explicitly tell colleagues to allow the bill to move forward on Friday or Saturday, Johanns said. But, he added, with the beginning of the holiday break within senators' grasp they didn't need to. "I think this is the time of year," he said.

By Monday, opponents will be out of options procedurally and the Senate will be forced to take up the omnibus bill regardless of objections. A strange cross-section of members including Sens. Ted Cruz, John McCain and Elizabeth Warren all plan to vote against the omnibus, but it is expected to easily pass the 60-vote threshold needed to move through the Senate and find its way to the president's desk. Obama has already said he would sign it.

Once the omnibus is dispensed with, senators still have a lengthy list of tasks left to accomplish before they leave town for the rest of the year, including a package of tax break extensions, a reauthorization of terrorism risk insurance (TRIA) and more than a dozen nominations.

Those procedures, too, will need a unanimous agreement to move forward in a timely fashion. With strong objections among Republicans and some Democrats on both the tax extenders bill and TRIA, senators could see their holiday breaks postponed until late next week.

But Thune said he didn't see any of the holds on the provisions as "insurmountable," allowing a vote on tax extenders while many members believe that the TRIA vote will be dropped altogether. The House-passed TRIA bill is not currently on Reid's legislative calendar, meaning that unless the House returns to pick up the Senate-passed version of the legislation, the TRIA program will expire at the end of December.

"I don't think we're back here next week," Thune said.