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Law360 (September 21, 2020, 9:40 PM EDT) -- House Democrats introduced a bill Monday to fund the federal government through Dec. 11, which would provide special funding for the U.S. Navy's Columbia-class submarine program and extend a program to reimburse federal contractors for COVID-19-related sick leave.
The continuing resolution would fund the federal government beyond the end of September, the end of fiscal year 2020, giving lawmakers time to negotiate full-year spending bills while avoiding a federal shutdown.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said Monday that the bill had been made "sadly necessary" by the "irresponsibility" of the Senate in not passing appropriations legislation earlier in the year.
"While the House did its job and passed bills funding nearly every government agency, Senate Republicans did not even begin the appropriations process," she said in a statement.
The bill, H.R. 8319, would largely fund agencies at existing levels, although it would allow some exceptions to existing spending caps as well as to the bar on agencies entering into new programs that typically comes along with a continuing resolution, such as increased funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' ongoing electronic health record modernization program.
That also includes a section of the bill that would let the Navy begin design and construction work on two submarines from the upcoming Columbia class, providing $1.6 billion in funding for that work. The Columbia class is a ballistic missile submarine, intended to replace the Navy's aging Ohio-class submarines.
That funding "anomaly" had been requested by the White House earlier this month, with U.S. Department of Defense acquisition chief Ellen Lord telling lawmakers at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Sep. 17 that the DOD had "zero margin" in its timeline for getting the Columbia class built.
The proposed continuing resolution does not include the two other major defense-related anomaly requests made by the White House. The administration had asked lawmakers to set up specific funding accounts for the newly launched U.S. Space Force instead of using U.S. Air Force accounts, and to allow the U.S. Department of Energy to begin work on the new W93 nuclear warhead, intended to top submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
The bill would also extend and tweak several existing programs, including granting the U.S. Coast Guard the authority to use operations and support funding to pay staff, amid a reduction in fee collections during COVID-19.
It would push back the expiration of Section 3610 of the CARES Act, the sweeping pandemic response bill passed by Congress in March, to Dec. 11. Section 3610 allows agencies to reimburse federal contractors for the costs of keeping their employees in a "ready state" if unable to work due to COVID-19, such as if they are sick or their jobs can't be done by telecommuting.
Federal contracting industry groups have pushed lawmakers for months to extend Section 3610, saying their pandemic-related workforce readiness problems will persist past the end of fiscal 2020. The DOD, which is expected to receive the bulk of the reimbursement claims made under the program, has also asked Congress for billions of dollars in related supplemental funding so it doesn't have to take away from money needed for readiness and modernization programs.
The House will vote on the continuing resolution on Tuesday, but it isn't clear whether or when the Senate will take it up.
Although Lowey said the bill was a "clean" continuing resolution without potentially contentious provisions, Republicans said Monday that it should have included billions of dollars in additional Commodity Credit Corp. funding for farmers impacted by the pandemic, apparently a sticking point in earlier negotiations for a bipartisan bill.
The CCC helps to stabilize and support farm income and prices, such as through loans, subsidies and purchasing farm production, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"House Democrats' rough draft of a government funding bill shamefully leaves out key relief and support that American farmers need," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a tweet Monday. "This is no time to add insult to injury and defund help for farmers and rural America."
--Editing by Aaron Pelc.
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