Spending bills ready for votes

bipartisan deal eliminating austere spending caps for fiscal 2019, the second leg of the twoyear budget agreement reached in February.

The Military Construction-va title, the largest of the three, would provide $98.1 billion overall, including $921 million designated as war-related spending outside the regular caps, or a 5.8 percent boost over the current year. Energy-water programs would receive $44.6 billion, a 3.2 percent increase; while the Legislative Branch measure is funded at $4.8 billion, a 2.1 percent increase.

Getting three of the 12 annual spending bills signed into law before the new fiscal year begins will be a milestone that Congress hasn’t reached since fiscal 2009. But lawmakers want to beat that record — possibly getting as many as nine of the bills enacted before the end of the month.

If they can accomplish that, it’ll be the first time since fiscal 1997 that more than four bills became law before the end of September.

Optimism abounds, especially for the Defense and Labor-hhs-education spending package. That combination packs the biggest punch of the remaining two conferences, accounting for roughly 63 percent of the $1.244 trillion in “base” discretionary spending for fiscal 2019, not counting Overseas Contingency Operations funds and other spending allowed outside the regular caps.

The four-bill package containing the Agriculture, Financial Services, Interior-environment and Transportation-hud bills could follow.