House approves $1.2-trillion package of spending bills before shutdown deadline; Senate up next

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson gestures as he speaks at the Capitol in Washington

By KEVIN FREKING

Associated Press

March 22, 2024 9:45 AM PT

WASHINGTON — The House approved a $1.2-trillion package of spending bills Friday just a few hours before funding for some key federal agencies was set to expire, a long-overdue action nearly six months into the budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall.

The bill passed by a vote of 286 to 134 and now moves to the Senate, where leadership hoped for a final vote later Friday. More than 70% of the money would go to defense.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) brought the bill up under a streamlined process that required two-thirds support for approval.

The threat of missing the midnight deadline for funding the government remained, as the Senate was left with little time to take action.

But the practical impact of missing the deadline would be minimal in the near term. With most federal workers off duty over the weekend and many government services funded through previous legislation, a shutdown could largely pass without incident unless the Senate’s consideration of the spending package drags into Monday.

Johnson broke up this fiscal year’s spending bills into two parts as House Republicans revolted against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for one massive, complex bill with little time to review before facing a shutdown. The speaker viewed that as a breakthrough.

Still, most of the opposition in the House on Friday came from Republicans who viewed the bill as spending too much, with too few of their policy priorities.

“The bottom line is that this is a complete and utter surrender,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), who called himself “a hell no” on the bill.

Many particularly took issue with fellow Republicans voting for the bill and with House GOP leaders’ support for it.

“It’s clear that the Democrats own the speaker’s gavel,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.).

“We told the people we were going to have a smaller government, and we told the people we were going to secure the border,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). “It’s a sad day.”

It took lawmakers six months into the current fiscal year to get this close to the finish line, the process slowed as hard-line Republicans pushed for more policy mandates and steeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider. The impasse required them to pass several short-term stopgap spending bills to keep agencies funded as negotiations continued.

“It is ironic that the group that has made compromise the most difficult over the last year continues to oppose compromise,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said during House floor debate on the bill. “Legislative action is about compromise.”

The first package of full-year spending bills, which funded the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Interior, among others, cleared Congress two weeks ago with just hours to spare before the agencies’ funding expired.

The second bill, of 1,012 pages, is to fund the departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Labor and others.

Nondefense spending will be relatively flat compared with the prior fiscal year, though some departments, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, are taking a hit, and many will not see their budgets keep up with inflation.

With the two packages, discretionary spending for the budget year will come to about $1.66 trillion. That does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country’s rising debt.

Republicans failed to secure a provision to prohibit funding through March 2025 for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

Republicans had insisted on cutting off funding to UNRWA after Israel claimed a dozen agency employees were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. UNRWA fired the employees but has disputed the claim and said Israel forced some to falsely confess to Hamas ties. A recent U.S. intelligence report also cited “low confidence” in Israel’s allegations.

The proposed prohibition concerned some lawmakers because many relief agencies say there is no way to replace UNRWA’s role in delivering humanitarian assistance in Gaza, where a quarter of the 2.3 million residents are starving, according to the U.N.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, lead Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the provision had troubled some Democratic committee members, and pointed out that they were able to secure an increase of about $336 million overall for humanitarian assistance.

To win support from House Republicans, Johnson pointed to a spending increase for about 8,000 more detention beds for migrants awaiting their proceedings or deportation. Republican leaders also highlighted an increase for hiring about 2,000 additional Border Patrol agents.

Democrats boasted of a $1-billion increase for Head Start programs and new child-care centers for military families, as well as a $120-million increase for cancer research and a $100-million increase for Alzheimer’s research.

“We defeated outlandish cuts that would have been a gut punch for American families and our economy,” said Senate President Pro Tem Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

The bill’s spending largely tracks with an agreement that then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) worked out with the White House in May 2023, which called for restricting spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling into January 2025 so the government could continue paying its bills.

Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers Thursday that last year’s agreement, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, would save about $1 trillion over the coming decade.

Members of both parties expressed frustration over how long the spending bill process had taken and that the end result was what many had predicted, when they warned that Republicans would not get the vast majority of policy mandates they were seeking or cut spending further than McCarthy and the White House agreed to last year.

“People were living in a dream world,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said of those who’d thought, “Well, we’re going to [do] something different than what McCarthy had an agreement with the president on.”

Freking writes for the Associated Press. AP staff writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.