Congress gets $1.2t spending bill days before shutdown
Military pay, funds for border security included
Congressional leaders unveiled new federal spending legislation Thursday that would raise military pay, eliminate US funding for the UN relief agency in Palestine, and bolster security at the US-Mexico border.
The bill to allocate $1.2 trillion, the product of a deal between President Biden, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Democratic Senate majority leader Charles E. Schumer, would fund about three-quarters of the federal government for the next six months, until the end of the fiscal year. But lawmakers have scant time to approve it before a shutdown deadline this weekend.
Congress passed, and Biden signed, another set of six bills this month worth $459 billion to fund the rest of the government.
Without new legislation, many agencies will shutter at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. In the House, a vote could come as soon as Friday morning, pushing the more deliberate Senate up against a ticking countdown clock.
“I think the final product is something that we were able to achieve a lot of key provisions in and wins and move in a direction that we want even with our tiny, historically small majority,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday.
The legislation comes late in Congress’s budget calendar, with the 2024 fiscal year half over. But Congress has not passed all of its appropriations bills on time since 1997, according to the Pew Research Center, often relying instead on stopgap funding bills called continuing resolutions, or CRs.
Even if Congress doesn’t finish work by the deadline, the effects of a shutdown might be minimal as long as lawmakers act before Monday.
But if a closure goes longer, more than half of IRS employees would face furloughs at the height of tax filing season. Border Patrol officers and about 1.3 million active-duty military service members would remain on the job without pay. So would Transportation Security Administration screeners, many of whom called in sick as a protest after a previous shutdown dragged on for weeks, sparking nationwide travel delays.
“No one should want a shutdown. No one should cause a shutdown. Let’s pull together and get this done,” Senator Patty Murray, the chief Democratic negotiator, said Wednesday. “Please excuse the former preschool teacher in me, but here’s the lesson I hope everyone learned when we pass these last six bills: When we listen to each other, and to the American people instead of the loudest voices on the far right, we can work together, and actually pass meaningful bills that help people back home.”
Funding the Department of Homeland Security emerged as the biggest obstacle for the appropriations package, turning into a larger fight between the White House and Johnson over operations to secure the southern border and immigration policy as a whole.
The legislation unveiled Thursday would increase funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is facing a budget shortfall, to support roughly 42,000 beds in detention facilities, and it would fund 22,000 Border Patrol agents. It would also cut US contributions by 20 percent to nongovernmental organizations that provide services for new arrivals to the country. Lawmakers who want to restrict immigration argue that the nonprofit groups incentivize illegal crossings.
Both parties claimed victories in the legislation. Military personnel would receive a 5.2 percent pay raise and significant increases in housing and food subsidies.
Republicans, still bruised from a lack of political success on earlier funding bills, secured a 12-month prohibition on federal funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The bill also includes a 6 percent cut to foreign aid programs, already a minuscule slice of federal spending, and a Republican change to the law to prohibit nonofficial US flags from flying atop American embassies.