Top lawmakers expect to meet with the White House this week to start talks on setting fiscal 2020 spending levels and how to resolve the recent expiration of the debt limit suspension, CQ reported Friday.
The talks will include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Friday that McConnell had already met with acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to discuss spending including disaster aid, the debt limit and fiscal 2020 budget levels.
“A lot of the emphasis was on spending caps, because we’re looking at disaster aid,” Shelby said of McConnell’s meeting. “We’ve been playing with that too long, and if we finish this, we’ve got to go to appropriations, which is much bigger.”
Without an agreement on fiscal 2020 levels by Oct. 1, discretionary spending would fall $125 billion next January.
Photo by Ben Aveling
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