White House 'anomalies' list kick-starts stopgap funding talks

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration wants flexibility in the stopgap funding bill to properly finance nutrition benefits for pregnant and nursing mothers; low-income housing vouchers; services for veterans exposed to toxins overseas; and the “D.C. fix” enabling local officials to spend more of the city’s own funds, among other requests delivered to Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

By itself, the White House’s “anomalies” list appears pretty innocuous and includes priorities backed by members on both sides of the aisle for years in continuing resolutions that are needed to prevent partial government shutdowns after Sept. 30. But there are two major problems thus far for Democratic leaders that are likely to be topics of discussion in the coming days.

The first is the duration of the funding request: the Trump administration wants it to go out to Jan. 31, 2026, which Democrats and some GOP appropriators argue is too lengthy — they prefer a shorter stopgap measure to keep the pressure on for a deal on full-year fiscal 2026 spending bills.

The second is that enhanced premium tax credits that subsidize health insurance coverage purchased on federal and state exchanges, expiring Dec. 31, aren’t addressed in either the anomalies list or a separate document outlining authorization issues that have the White House’s blessing to ride along with the CR.

The more generous health care tax credits have support from both sides of the aisle but are opposed by GOP leaders and conservatives in both chambers. A CR running through next January would remove a must-pass legislative vehicle to get those provisions extended before the deadline.

House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., quickly came out against the proposed CR duration, arguing it was too much time for President Donald Trump and his chain saw-wielding budget director, Russ Vought, to exert control over the federal purse strings.

“Delaying the critical work of funding the government until the end of January is only step one in President Trump and Russ Vought’s plan to never fund it at all,” DeLauro said.

‘Sense of urgency’

For his part, House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., has been pushing a plan with his Senate GOP counterpart, Susan Collins of Maine, to extend stopgap funds only until November while pairing the CR with full-year Military Construction-VA, Agriculture and Legislative Branch measures — all three of which passed the Senate before the recess.

Cole said he was still advocating the shorter stopgap measure, although Collins told reporters the length was “obviously not my call.”

“I think the sentiment is still probably leaning towards something shorter, and that’s pretty much on both sides,” Cole said. “It’s basically with the idea to keep a sense of urgency, movement.”

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., generally defers to White House requests. He did, however, endorse the three-bill combo package idea that Collins and Cole have been pursuing, saying at his weekly news conference that he favors creating a formal House-Senate conference committee to draft compromise versions of those bills.

“What we’re really advocating for is an actual, old-school conference, the way this is supposed to work between the House and Senate,” Johnson said. “So you’d have a cross section of everybody there, a good representation of the country, a good and I think vigorous debate between the House and Senate, and that is how the process is supposed to work. That is small-d democracy at its best. So we’re big advocates of that.”

While supportive of that approach, Cole said the Senate must decide if it’s willing to adopt that rarely used procedure because of the floor time it would require. In recent years, final spending bills have typically been resolved in a more streamlined fashion among subcommittee chairs and leadership.

“I would prefer a formal conference,” Cole said. “I think that’s what we should do. But (the Senate) would have to give up three days on the floor unless they have a unanimous consent agreement with the Democrats. That’s something they’d have to work out amongst themselves.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., expressed some hesitation about a formal conference, however, given the procedural hoops necessary. But he seemed open to the idea.

“We actually have to vote to go to conference … but if there’s cooperation from the Democrats and they also want to see these bills ultimately get enacted into law, I think there’s a path forward there, and I think that’d be a great way to operate, in a way in which we haven’t now for the last couple years,” Thune said Tuesday.

Cole said finalizing the three bills in question shouldn’t be difficult or overly time-consuming because the funding levels between the two chambers on those bills “are not very far apart” and would not require negotiators to settle on a topline discretionary spending limit first.

Cole said appropriators have had no preliminary discussions for a topline spending deal.

“That’s later, and that would have to involve the White House as well,” he said.

WIC boost, EPA elevator fix

The anomalies requests includes some preliminary indications that the White House understands some of its initial budget may be insufficient.

One of the proposed anomalies, or deviations from otherwise flat-funded accounts in the CR, would boost the rate of funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, to $8.2 billion — a half-billion-dollar increase above the White House budget request for fiscal 2026.

According to the anomalies request, without the increase, states “would not be able to serve all eligible participants at the current benefit levels.”

The White House also wants to make payments from the “Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund,” created in 2022 to help veterans more easily obtain health and disability benefits, eligible for a bigger pot of funds. Otherwise funding would drop from about $30 billion in fiscal 2025 to $6 billion after Sept. 30.

While the administration has proposed deep cuts to Department of Housing and Urban Development rental vouchers for low-income households, the anomalies document seeks authority to free up more funding for the final quarter of calendar year 2025, without which HUD wouldn’t have enough funds to maintain aid to about 40,000 families, the document states.

The D.C. funding fix was a matter of great consternation earlier this year when it was left out of the full-year stopgap measure for fiscal 2025. The annual anomaly enables the District of Columbia government to spend its own funds approved in a local budget. The omission initially cost the city government about $1.1 billion, although local officials were eventually able to patch many of the holes over the summer.

Another interesting anomaly would allow EPA to tap unspent funds for emergency elevator repairs at the agency’s D.C. headquarters.

“Without the anomaly, there is a risk of entrapment for staff given the state of disrepair in which the building’s elevators currently operate,” the document says.

Other proposed anomalies include:

—The annual “spend faster” provision that would allow FEMA’s disaster relief fund access to its full-year appropriation to spend as needed, in this case more than $22 billion. That should, at least for a short period, eliminate a projected deficit in the disaster aid fund without requiring the agency to trigger “immediate needs funding” authority, which cuts off aid to all but the most urgent services.

—Another spend-faster anomaly would allow the Pentagon to buy one Columbia-class strategic ballistic-missile submarine and enter into a contract for up to five more.

—An amendment to Forest Service authorities to allow staff stationed in Puerto Rico access to primary and secondary schooling.

—A higher funding rate for the Indian Health Service to support three newly opened health facilities.

—$4 billion in additional direct and guaranteed loan authority for the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing program, including “Indo-Pacific partners who have indicated interest in continuing loan negotiations this fall.”

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