Congress is finally back to work this week with yet another funding deadline looming over Capitol Hill. This time around, though, the members are starting things off on a rare positive note. Congressional leaders over the weekend announced that they’ve come to an agreement on the top-line spending amounts that will be divided among the federal government’s various programs and departments.
This is a big deal because House Republicans have been grumbling for months about the deal between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden during last year’s debt ceiling negotiations. That agreement — passed into law as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act — mandated that the current fiscal year would be funded with an overall spending level of $1.59 trillion. According to Sunday’s announcement, the current fiscal year will now be funded with an overall spending level of $1.59 trillion.
According to Sunday’s announcement, the current fiscal year will now be funded with an overall spending level of $1.59 trillion.
Yes, you read that correctly. There is no substantive difference between the agreement made between Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., despite Johnson’s attempts to say otherwise. It’s the appropriations process version of Vanilla Ice insisting that the beat for “Ice Ice Baby” is entirely different than the bass line to Queen and David Bowie’s hit “Under Pressure.”
Even the way that the money is divided between military and nonmilitary spending is the same as before: $886 billion for the former and $704 billion for the latter. The biggest change of note between the two agreements is that the $20 billion in IRS funding cuts that Biden agreed to have spread out over two years will instead both come in this year’s bill. But Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said that roughly $69 billion in rescissions from IRS spending and money allocated to Covid would be…
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