Republicans said Sunday that they hope to limit total nondefense spending in fiscal year 2024 to about $704 billion, $40 billion less than fiscal year 2023. House and Senate leaders had already agreed earlier this year to spend about $1.7 trillion in what’s known as discretionary spending, which includes domestic programs and military spending but doesn’t include massive, expensive programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Congress plans to use two packages of legislation to fund the entire government. The House must vote on the first package this week, then move it to the Senate for a vote. Legislative action must be complete before the March 8 funding deadline that was set late last week to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The latest measure would fund several agencies, including the Departments of Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.
Congress is expected to easily pass the funding package. But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will have to circumvent a blockade from the far-right who will protest the amount of government spending and lack of policy wins on social issues like restrictions for abortion funds and keeping in check government mandates for LGBTQ rights and diversity policy. To get around those objections, Johnson will have to pass the measure in a way that requires two-thirds of the House, and therefore a significant number of Democrats, to support it.`
Congress still faces a March 22 deadline to secure funding for the rest of the government in a second package that is expected to include spending for the Defense Department. Lawmakers must pass all 12 appropriations bills before April 30 to avoid 1 percent across-the-board cuts, a plan embraced by some in the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus.
In a statement Sunday, Johnson sought to highlight the conservative portions of the funding bills, arguing that Republicans were able to impose “sharp cuts to agencies and programs critical to the President Biden’s agenda.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), meanwhile, hailed the package and urged quick action on it in the House, promising to bring it to the Senate floor.
A member of House Republican leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding package, said that lawmakers are “still in the midst of significant negotiations in the second package.”
The GOP member argued that the funding package was a victory, saying that it is not a sprawling “omnibus,” the term used for one massive bill to fund the entire government. Rather, it is a “robust” six-bill package that was developed over time with “more member engagement.”
“We were saying, ‘No omnibus,’” the Republican said. “The Senate was not going to get away with not doing anything and then just, you know, posting their bills online and having a negotiation from there.”
Democrats successfully demanded that there be no cuts to the Women, Infants and Children food assistance program, something that Republicans wanted to slash. In fact, the program is getting a $1 billion boost over the current levels.
“I said I would move mountains to fully fund WIC and that’s exactly what I did,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Sunday. “I’m glad that the millions of moms and babies who rely on this program won’t have to suffer the stress and harm of losing access to the lifesaving nutritional support.”
House Republicans, meanwhile, pointed provisions in the deal that will cut spending to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
They particularly seized on what they said would be a 6 percent cut to the FBI, with the member of House GOP leadership saying this was done in part because members of the conference are “significantly upset about the FBI being weaponized” against parents who criticize their local school board officials, an elaborate theory right-wing Republicans have spread despite dubious evidence.
The package also increases funds to the Drug Enforcement Administration and secures additional funding for efforts to combat the trade of fentanyl. Additionally, the package fully funds veterans’ health care and benefits.
Democratic leadership welcomed the six measures on Sunday.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat in the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Sunday that she was “pleased” to see Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate work to produce bipartisan measures that will keep the government open.
“I am grateful that each of these bills rejects many of the extreme cuts and policies proposed by House Republicans and protects the great strides we made over the last two years to reverse the underinvestment in domestic programs that Americans depend on,” DeLauro said. “I urge swift passage of this package and look forward to releasing the remaining 2024 funding bills.”
Appropriations leaders on both parties also emphasized the bipartisan nature of the bills. Murray said the package “was a negotiation” and that “Democrats worked under really tough fiscal constraints that I never agreed with, but for months, I’ve made clear we can in fact fund our government if we just work together in a reasonable, bipartisan way.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican in the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement that members of the committee “in both chambers have worked very hard to reach agreements on the bill text unveiled today.”
Congress was supposed to have several appropriations, or spending bills for the rest of the fiscal year, ready to pass by the end of last week. Instead, bickering over policy demands pushed the federal government to the brink of a shutdown again, necessitating another stopgap spending bill — the third since September — to buy more time.
The measure announced Sunday pushes Congress closer to finalizing a lengthy government process that was supposed to be far less fraught. Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last spring agreed to constrain federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, in exchange for suspending the debt limit.
But far-right lawmakers in the House grew furious with McCarthy for not extracting deeper spending cuts, and they ultimately ousted him from the speakership. Republicans elected Johnson as his replacement in late October, and the Louisianian has struggled to navigate spending debates ever since.
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the legislative package released Sunday totaled $704 billion. The bills released on Sunday add up to a total of about $460 billion; the $704 billion figure is what Republican lawmakers say they want to spend on total nondefense discretionary programs for the fiscal year that ends in September. That amount would include programs to be funded in a second piece of legislation that isn’t yet finalized. The article has been corrected.
Leigh Ann Caldwell and Daniel Gilbert contributed to this report.
