Congress close to passing massive spending bill with other pieces of legislation attached

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• Judy Woodruff:

  U.S. lawmakers are working around the clock to pass a massive $1.7 trillion government funding bill before they head home for the holidays.

  Over 4,000 pages of legislative text were released overnight, and they include key spending measures, like over $800 billion in defense spending, $45 billion for Ukraine aid, $800 billion in nondefense spending, and at least $38 billion in disaster aid.

  Following this all so closely is John Bresnahan, veteran Capitol Hill reporter and co-founder of the political news daily Punchbowl News.

  John Bresnahan, welcome back to the "NewsHour." Thank you for joining us.

  Let's start with the overall — give us an overall sense of what is in this massive piece of legislation, 4,000 pages.

• John Bresnahan, Punchbowl News:

  Yes, it's a huge bill. It was dropped at — you have said it. It was dropped at 1:45 a.m. last night. So nobody outside the Appropriations Committee in the House and Senate has read the full thing. It's too much.

  As you can see behind me, there's a Senate vote going on right now. What's in this bill is that this would fund the government through September 30 of 2023. So, this will keep government agencies fully funded through next year. This ends kind of a face-off we have had for the last couple of weeks over government funding.

  Right now, government funding expires midnight on Friday. If they don't pass this bill or some other bill to keep the government agencies open, there would be a shutdown. They're going to — they're starting the process right now. They're starting the parliamentary process of moving forward right now. So, this is a vital piece of legislation. It funds the entire government.

  There's 12 different appropriations bills jammed into one package. It's just a huge piece of legislation.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And they have waited until the last minute to deal with.

  So, John, just quickly, major wins and losses for each party in here?

• John Bresnahan:

  Yes, the Republicans held — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republicans played a really tough hand here.

  They had — they had all the cards. They wanted a big increase in military spending. They got it with the situation in Ukraine, which the situation in Taiwan, with all the challenges that U.S. military faces worldwide. They have got that. As you noted, it's $858 billion just for one year for military spending for the United States.

  Now, what — the thing other thing they wanted to do is, they wanted to break this relationship between increases in military spending and increases in domestic spending, social spending. And they have kind of — this parity that's existed for the last couple of years. They were able to do that as well.

  We're still spending a huge amount of money on domestic programs. It's $800 billion, but it's not moving — it's not increasing as much as defense spending. That's a 10 percent increase in defense spending.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Most notable, as you say.

  So, John, we know there are some interests — other interesting adds here. The Electoral Reform Act ended up being part of this and a ban on TikTok.

• John Bresnahan:

  Yes.

  So, the Electoral Count Reform Act, this is to avoid what happened on January 6, 2020. This bill, which is led by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, would limit the role of the vice president in — during the Electoral College certification of the state results on — what happened on January 6.

  This was what the pro-Trump supporters, when they attacked the Capitol, they were trying to ban the certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. This would stop that. This would give — make sure to say that the vice president's role is just ceremonial. It also would — it would also make it more difficult for senators and members who object to state results to try to force a vote on that.

  So this would try to stop what happened on January 6 from happening again. This is a very important piece of legislation. This should pass, as well as the rest of the bill.

  The other issue is TikTok, as you mentioned. There's a lot of concern about law enforcement and national security agencies about TikTok. This is a hugely popular app. It's owned by a Chinese company that has partial ownership by the Chinese government. We're going to ban it from — this bill would ban it from government devices. A number of states are doing the same thing on their own devices.

  We will see much more on this in the next Congress. There will be efforts to ban the use of TikTok across the entire United States.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And just quickly, John, the sense is that this will ultimately pass; is that correct?

• John Bresnahan:

  Yes, it's going to be tough.

  I mean, they're — technically, the senators who are opposed to this — you showed Rand Paul from Kentucky before — they could drag this out. They could drag this into next week, but they say they're not going to.

  So they want some votes. They want some votes on amendments. They want to change the bill. But there's enough Democratic support and there's enough support, enough Republicans to pass it in the Senate. We think that will happen tomorrow, possibly Thursday. Then it goes to the House. That will take — that will take one day.

  And then it's off to President Biden's desk.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, two other important things I want to ask you about, John Bresnahan.

  One, very quickly, is the House Ways and Means Committee taking up the question of whether — what to do about former President Trump's taxes. Is the expectation that they are going to ask that those be released and made available?

• John Bresnahan:

  Yes, that's happening now.

  The Ways and Means Committee is still meeting in executive session, which means it's closed to the public. It's just members and staff. They're reviewing this issue of whether to release Trump's taxes from 2015 to 2020. They have six years of Trump's taxes. Our expectation is, that it happens. It happens pretty quickly. It could happen tonight.

  Could — they could release them tomorrow. There's literally one copy of the tax returns. There's so confidential. So, even with a vote, they're going to have to take a little time to process it. But we expect that to happen tonight or tomorrow.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And just finally, John, you broke the story late today about Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy making his first trip overseas outside the country since the war began, and that he's not only going to meet with President Biden, but he will be — we expect, address the Congress tomorrow night.

  Can you just quickly tell us what what's going on?

• John Bresnahan:

  Yes, we expect him to address a joint session of Congress tomorrow. It's a big deal.

  This goes back to the omnibus funding bill. That bill includes $45 billion in new economic and military aid for Ukraine and to support the U.S. allies in Eastern Europe, NATO allies with refugees and other economic issues that they face, pay for U.S. troops in those NATO allies.

  So this is a big deal that. Part of the reason why Zelenskyy is coming is to rally support for the omnibus. This plays to domestic politics here and it plays domestic politics back in Ukraine. Remember, the United States is by far the most important supporter for the Ukrainian government.

  And if this bill passes, this $45 billion, the United States will have spent — will be on a path to spend more than $100 billion helping Ukraine to fend off Russian aggression.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Remarkable, just this year.

  John Bresnahan, we thank you for your reporting. And thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.

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