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.