Lawmakers Signal Stopgap Spending Bill Needed as Talks Continue

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.), the majority whip, signaled that lawmakers were prepared to fall back on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.

“We are hopeful that something will come forward next week in the form of an omnibus. But if not, we will respond appropriately when we get to that point,” he said Friday.

Mr. Shelby told reporters that the question was whether Senate leaders would hammer out a short-duration continuing resolution or a longer interim deal. “If it’s a short term, that would mean probably that we’re making progress” toward the omnibus, he said.

The February deadline was set by an earlier short-term extension of government funding in December.

Congress is haggling over spending in a new era after the expiration of the 2011 Budget Control Act, which was designed to force compromise by triggering automatic spending cuts in the absence of an agreement on defense and nondefense funding. With the law’s expiration, the two parties have less incentive to abide by the principle of parity in military and nonmilitary spending increases.

President Biden called for a 15.9% increase in nondefense spending for fiscal 2022, to $769 billion, but only a 1.7% increase in the defense budget, to $753 billion.

Republicans have balked at the disparity, and the impasse over those overall spending levels has in turn slowed the work of allocating funding to the 12 individual bills that are the basis of an omnibus package. There are also program-by-program battles, such as whether to tack on new money for Ukraine as Russia masses troops at its border and whether to provide another round of funds related to the Covid-19 pandemic, such as money for therapeutics and new vaccines.

The Pentagon is pressing lawmakers to strike a deal, one that would allow the military to reorient its budget to address current needs. Under a continuing resolution, spending levels remain the same into the new fiscal year, as do the priorities. The military has long said that interim spending bills threaten its ability to adapt to changing threats, a message that lawmakers said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin repeated in recent briefings on Russia’s threat to Ukraine.

“We have to get a deal,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who plays a big role in the spending negotiations, said Friday. “The most important thing is the oath we take to protect and defend.”

On coronavirus spending, Democratic leaders have said that they are waiting for the White House to request money formally. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters last week that while the U.S. has enough money to fund immediate needs, it wants to stay ahead of the virus.

“We are looking at a future where we will likely need funding for treatments and pills; we’ll need funding to continue to expand testing,” he said, as well as to “continue to lead that effort to vaccinate the world.”

A group of Democrats has called for $17 billion for global vaccination and treatments to be included in the fiscal 2022 spending bill.

Beyond that, the two parties are sparring over the inclusion of policy riders, in particular a longstanding ban on providing federal funding for most abortions. Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress, have advanced appropriations bills that would undo the ban, known as the Hyde amendment after the lawmaker who first sponsored the policy.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com