The House approved a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills on Friday just hours before funding for some key federal agencies expires, a long-awaited measure nearly six months into a budget year that would push any threats of a government shutdown into bankruptcy. the fall.
The bill was approved by a vote of 286 to 134, and now moves to the Senate, where leadership hopes for a final vote on it later Friday. More than 70% of the money will go to defense.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) introduced the bill under a streamlined process that requires two-thirds support for approval.
It is still possible that lawmakers will miss the midnight deadline to fund the government because the action in the Senate could take some time. But the practical impact in the near term will be minimal. With most federal employees off duty over the weekend and many government services funded through prior legislation, the shutdown will mostly pass without incident unless things are pushed back to Monday.
Johnson split this fiscal year's spending bills in two as House Republicans revolted against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for a massive, complex bill with little time to review it or face a shutdown. Johnson considered this a breakthrough. However, most of the opposition Friday came from Republicans, who saw the bill as containing too few of their policy priorities and spending too much.
“The bottom line is this is complete and utter surrender,” said Rep. Eric Burleson (R-Mo.), who described himself as “no hell in this law.”
Opponents took particular issue with their Republican colleagues' votes in favor of the bill and the actions of the House GOP leadership. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) went so far as to say, “The Democrats clearly have the speaker's hammer.”
“We told people we were going to have a smaller government, and we told people we were going to secure the border,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). “It's a sad day.”
It has taken six months of the current fiscal year for lawmakers to get closer to the finish line, and the process has been slowed by conservatives who have pushed for more policy mandates and deeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would contemplate. The impasse required several temporary, short-term spending bills to keep agencies funded as negotiations continued.
“It is ironic that the group that has made compromise the most difficult over the past year continues to oppose compromise,” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said during debate on the bill. “Legislative action is about compromise.”
The first package of full-year spending bills, which funded the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and Interior, among others, passed Congress two weeks ago and has only hours to go before funding for those agencies expires. Now, lawmakers are considering the second package under a similar scenario.
The 1,012-page bill also funds the Departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Labor and others.
Non-defense spending will be relatively flat compared to the previous year, although some agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, are taking a hit, and many agencies will not be able to see their budgets keep up with inflation.
When the two packages are combined, estimated spending for the budget year will reach about $1.66 trillion. This does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country's growing debt.
Republicans in the House of Representatives were able to secure a provision prohibiting funding until March 2025 for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees, the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians in Gaza.
Republicans insist on cutting off funding for the agency after Israel claimed that dozens of agency employees were involved in the attack carried out by Hamas in Israel on October 7.
But the ban is worrying some lawmakers because many aid agencies say there is no way to replace their ability to deliver the humanitarian aid that the United States and others are trying to send to Gaza, where a quarter of the 2.3 million people are hungry. According to the United Nations.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the provision caused some problems with Democratic members, but she also noted that Democrats were able to secure more humanitarian aid overall. It will increase by about $336 million over the previous year's levels.
To win Republican support, Johnson also touted some increases in guaranteed spending for about 8,000 additional detention beds for immigrants awaiting immigration proceedings or being removed from the country. This represents an increase of 24% from current levels. GOP leadership also highlighted more money to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.
Meanwhile, Democrats are touting a $1 billion increase for Head Start programs and new child care centers for military families. They also highlighted a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100 million increase for Alzheimer's disease research.
“We defeated outlandish cuts that would have been a huge blow to American families and our economy,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
The spending in the bill largely tracks the agreement that then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) reached with the White House in May 2023, which restricted spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling until January 2025 so the federal government could continue paying its bills. .
Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers on Thursday that last year's agreement, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, would save the federal government about $1 trillion over the next decade.
Members of both parties expressed frustration at how long the process took and that the end result was what many expected. They warned all along that Republicans would not get the vast majority of policy mandates they were seeking or cut spending further than McCarthy and the White House agreed to last year.
“People were living in a dream world thinking, ‘OK, we're going to do something different than what McCarthy agreed to with the president,'” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.).
Freking writes for the Associated Press. AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
