Congress unveils long-awaited funding bills ahead of shutdown threat
Congressional leaders on Sunday unveiled the long-awaited bipartisan bills to fund parts of the government for the rest of fiscal 2024, setting off a sprint to avert the looming shutdown threat in less than a week.
The six spending bills fund a slew of agencies until early fall, including the departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Justice, Commerce and Energy.
The 1,050-page package includes more than $450 billion in funding for fiscal year 2024.
Lawmakers have until Friday to pass the legislation or risk a partial government shutdown under a stopgap plan President Biden signed into law this week to buy more time for spending talks.
The Sunday rollout comes as Congress is behind in finishing up its funding work for fiscal 2024, which began five months ago.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that both sides were able to reach a funding compromise that will keep “the government open without cuts or poison pill riders.”
However, Republicans are already claiming wins, touting cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the funding package.
The GOP-led House and Democrat-led Senate entered negotiations with vastly different bills this year, as House Republicans pursued much more partisan measures with steep cuts to government funding that went beyond budget caps agreed to as part of the debt limit deal brokered between President Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last year.
Conservatives had been pushing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to put forward a yearlong stopgap funding bill, which would trigger automatic cuts to government spending, if Republicans didn't secure concessions on partisan policy riders.
Those proposed riders include measures that target abortion access, the Biden administration’s orders on diversity and gender identity, and a host of others that have drawn fierce opposition from Democrats.
House GOP leadership previously tempered expectations for major conservative policy changes, with Johnson telling members last month not to expect “a lot of home runs and grand slams” in the bipartisan funding bills.
Still, upon release of the first tranche of fiscal 2024 funding bills on Sunday, Republicans highlighted some changes notched in the bill, including measures they said would cut endangered species listing activities at U.S. Fish and Wildlife and another aimed at protecting gun rights of veterans seeking assistance with benefits.
Democrats, on the other hand, lauded securing money to “fully fund” the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which provides food assistance to millions of low-income families across the country. The measure includes more than $7 billion for the program, a $1 billion increase above fiscal 2023 levels, as Democrats have pressed for more dollars to address a shortfall.
However, the bill did not appear to include changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) sought by some Republicans as part of the negotiations aimed at ensuring recipients were using benefits to buy “nutritional” foods, the aide said, while also limiting access to items to foods like soda and candy.
House Republicans said ahead of the text’s release that they’re already looking to fiscal 2025 for a fresh start at shaping government funding for the coming year amid dissatisfaction with leadership’s handling of the annual appropriations process.
“There's always going to be a frustration about the 'four corners' negotiation because, at this point in time, you have members in the House that are effectively in the same position as senators with such a narrow margin,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said earlier this week.
“Everyone has a unique need back home and everyone has a unique position and trying to negotiate this in a 'four corners' setting. It's not working. It hasn't worked. It won't work,” Cammack said. "There's a commitment from the Speaker that moving forward on [fiscal 2025] appropriations, that this will be an open discussion.”
Some GOP negotiators argued ahead of the rollout that Democrats gained leverage in funding talks as leadership struggled to unify members amid deep divides on spending.
House GOP leadership is expected to bring up funding legislation next week under a suspension of the rules, given staunch resistance from hard-line conservatives.
While that would allow the House to bring up legislation without having to do a procedural vote first, it would also require two-thirds of the chamber’s support for passage, instead of the usual simple majority threshold — meaning Democratic support would be necessary to get the measure across the finish line.
“The reality is that if you have to pass these things by suspension, you’ve given [Democrats] more strength,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who heads the subcommittee that oversees funding for the Interior Department, said.
“I can’t tell you how many times during negotiations, what we heard from the other side was, ‘Hey, we’re going to bring 200 votes to pass these by suspension, what are you going to bring?’”
Updated at 4:27 p.m.