Before the shutdown deadline, the House approves a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills; the Senate will meet next

WASHINGTON: Just hours before funding for several important federal agencies was about to expire, the House adopted a $1.2 trillion bundle of spending legislation on Friday. This action, which was long overdue and occurred roughly six months into the budget year, will deter any potential government shutdown fears.

By a vote of 286–134, the law was approved and will now proceed to the Senate, where the leadership plans to have a final vote on Friday. Defense would receive more than 70 percent of the funding.
The bill was introduced by Republican Louisiana Speaker Mike Johnson under a streamlined procedure that needed two thirds of the members to pass.

Since the Senate may take some time to act, lawmakers may still miss the midnight deadline for funding the government. However, there would be little practical effect in the foreseeable future. Since many government functions are funded by previous legislation and the majority of federal employees are off work on weekends, a shutdown is unlikely to cause major problems unless it lasts until Monday.

As House Republicans rebelled against what has been an annual tradition of pushing them to vote on one big, complex bill with little time to analyze it or face a shutdown, Johnson divided the budget bills for this fiscal year into two sections. Johnson saw that as a significant development. Republicans, however, accounted for the majority of the opposition on Friday, believing that the plan spent excessively and included too few of their preferred policy objectives.
Republican Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri stated, “The bottom line is that this is a complete and utter surrender,” referring to the bill as “a hell no.”

In particular, the opponents criticized other Republicans for supporting the bill as well as the conduct of the House GOP leadership. To the extent that he did, Republican representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee said, “it’s clear that the Democrats own the speaker’s gavel.”

Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, stated, “We told the people we were going to secure the border and we were going to have a smaller government.” “It’s a sad day.”
With conservatives pushing for more policy mandates and sharper budget cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider, it has taken Congress six months into the current fiscal year to get close to the finish line. A number of temporary, stopgap spending legislation were needed to maintain agency funding while negotiations were ongoing due to the impasse.
During the bill’s floor debate, Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., remarked, “It is ironic that the group that has made compromise the most difficult over the last year continues to oppose compromise.” “Legislative action is about compromise.”

Just hours before the departments’ funding expired, the first set of full-year budget measures, which included financing for the Interior, Agriculture, and Veterans Affairs departments, among others, passed Congress two weeks ago. Legislators are currently thinking about the second package in a comparable situation.

The departments of Labor, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and others are also funded under the 1,012-page measure.
While some agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, are suffering, and many agencies’ budgets will not keep up with inflation, nondefense spending will remain essentially unchanged from the previous year.
Discretionary spending for the budget year will total around $1.66 trillion when the two packages are combined. That does not include funding the nation’s mounting debt or initiatives like Social Security and Medicare.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency is the primary provider of food, water, and shelter to civilians in Gaza. House Republicans were able to enact a measure that forbids funding for the agency through March 2025.
Republicans are adamant about severing the agency’s financing after Israel claimed that twelve workers were complicit in the Oct. 7 incident in Israel carried out by Hamas.
However, the fact that many relief organizations claim there is no way to replace its capacity to provide the humanitarian aid that the US and other countries are attempting to send to Gaza, where 25% of the 2.3 million population are malnourished, worries some senators about the embargo.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, acknowledged that the clause has caused some rifts with other Democrats but also noted that generally, Democrats had been able to win more humanitarian help. It will rise from the levels of the previous year by almost $336 million.
Johnson has also bragged about some of the budget increases that were able to secure for an additional 8,000 detention beds for migrants awaiting their immigration hearings or deportation from the United States in an effort to win over Republicans. That is a roughly 24% rise over present levels. Further, the GOP leadership emphasized funding for the hiring of around 2,000 Border Patrol agents.

Meanwhile, Democrats are gloating over additional child care facilities for military families and a $1 billion boost for Head Start programs. They also highlighted increases in financing of $100 million for Alzheimer’s research and $120 million for cancer research.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, stated, “We defeated absurd cuts that would have been a gut punch for American families and our economy.”
The expenditure in the plan is mostly in line with a deal struck in May 2023 between the White House and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., which postponed the debt ceiling until January 2025 and placed spending restrictions in place for two years to allow the federal government to continue paying its obligations.

The Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was derived from last year’s deal, will save the federal government around $1 trillion over the next ten years, according to Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, who spoke before legislators on Thursday.
Both sides expressed dissatisfaction with the length of time the process has taken and noted that the outcome was exactly what many had anticipated. They consistently forewarned that Republicans would not achieve the overwhelming majority of policy mandates or reduce spending beyond what McCarthy and the White House had reached last year.
“People were living in a dream world thinking, ‘Well, we’re going to something different than what McCarthy had an agreement with the president on,'” said Rep. Don Bacon, R- Nebraska.