Top congressional negotiators unveiled the $1.2 trillion budget proposal to fund the government through September in the early hours of Thursday. But it remained unclear whether Congress would be able to take timely action to avert a brief, partial government shutdown over the weekend.
Lawmakers are racing to pass the bill before Friday’s midnight deadline to prevent more than half of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and health agencies, from losing funding. They are already six months behind schedule due to lengthy negotiations to resolve funding and policy disputes.
Now that they’ve agreed on a final package combining six spending bills, passage could go past 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning due to a series of arcane congressional rules. House Republican leaders signaled they intend to vote on the bill on Friday, bypassing a self-imposed rule that requires lawmakers to be given at least 72 hours to consider the bill before it comes up for a vote comes.
There could be additional hurdles in the Senate, where a single lawmaker’s objection to speedy passage of legislation could prolong debate and delay a final vote.
Both Democrats and Republicans highlighted victories in the laboriously negotiated legislation. Republicans cited funding for border patrol agents, additional detention beds run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a provision cutting aid to the main United Nations agency that provides aid to Palestinians as victories. Democrats secured increased funding for federal child care and education programs as well as for cancer and Alzheimer’s research.
“We have had to work with difficult budget constraints – but this bipartisan compromise will move our country forward,” said Sen. Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee.
The bill funds about 8,000 more detention beds than last year’s bill, a provision that House Republicans fought bitterly for. Congress funded 34,000 beds through fall 2023, but under the stopgap measure currently funding the department, the number of beds increased to about 42,000. Negotiators agreed to continue providing funding to support this higher number.
In addition, funding for technology at the southern border will be increased by approximately 25 percent.
Lawmakers wrote the measure to comply with the debt and spending deal that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden negotiated last year. It called for spending on domestic programs to remain essentially unchanged, even as funding for veterans programs continues to grow and military spending increases slightly.
This led, in part, to cuts to the State Department budget and foreign aid programs, a frequent target of criticism from the Republican Party.
Republicans also managed to introduce a provision in the legislation that would prohibit funds from flowing to UNRWA, the main U.N. agency providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza, until March 2025, creating a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars could lead to the organization. The measure would extend a funding pause that the White House and lawmakers from both parties supported after Israel in January accused at least 12 UNRWA workers of involvement in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.
“House Republicans are committed to strategically increasing defense spending, making targeted cuts to overfunded non-defense programs and reversing wasteful spending from previous years,” said Rep. Kay Granger, Republican of Texas and chair of the Appropriations Committee. “I’m proud to say we’ve kept that promise, and this bill is proof.”
Democrats managed to push through significant increases in spending on child care and education programs and health research, pushed by the two main Democratic appropriators, Ms. Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who have worked for decades on initiatives to raise children out of poverty.
The legislation includes a 9 percent increase in funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the nation’s primary child care program, and a $275 million increase for Head Start. This also includes a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research.
“This bipartisan bill ensures that our workforce is strong, that families are healthy and safe, and that our children’s future is secure,” Ms. DeLauro said.
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2024-03-21 14:39:22
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