House passes $460 billion government funding deal, temporarily dodging shutdown:-IN WASHINGTON – The House passed the first six spending bills that the government needs to stay open for a long time. This means that Capitol Hill will no longer be afraid of a government shutdown all the time.
House passes $460 billion government funding deal, temporarily dodging shutdown
By a vote of 339 to 85, both Democrats and Republicans, the bill easily passed the lower house. Even though the Republicans controlled the House, a lot more Democrats than Republicans backed the bill. This is something that happens all the time in that body.
The spending bill didn’t get many of the conservative policy wins that some Republicans wanted, like tighter border patrols. This is why some Republicans voted against it.
Any final long-term spending bill would not have been enough to please conservatives, even though House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other GOP leaders tried to sell the package’s wins. Republicans never had much power to get what they wanted because the Senate was ruled by Democrats, President Joe Biden was in office, and the GOP’s majority in the House was very small.
“We want to cut back on spending and make the federal government smaller and less powerful.” “The truth is that our government is split right now,” Johnson said Wednesday morning.
The bill is now on its way to the Senate, where it is also likely to pass. It will then go to Biden’s desk to be signed.
What parts of the government does the bill fund?
This is the background: To keep the government running, Congress has to pass 12 separate spending bills every year. But lawmakers haven’t been able to meet their spending goals lately, so they tend to put all twelve bills together into one huge bill called a “omnibus.”
But the first six of those spending bills are due to expire on March 8. To keep the government from shutting down completely, the money was negotiated into a single deal called a “minibus.”
Parts of the government that will get money from the plan that was passed on Wednesday are:
- Agriculture, Rural Development and the Food and Drug Administration
- Commerce, Justice and Science
- Energy and Water Development
- Interior
- Military Construction and Veterans Affairs
- Transportation, Housing and Urban Development
The real test for Congress will be passing the last six bills, which are seen as much more contentious than the first half. Negotiators have until March 22 to reach a long-term agreement on how the government will pay for things like
- Defense
- Financial Services and General Government
- Homeland Security
- Labor, Health and Human Services, Education
- Legislative Branch
- State and Foreign Operations
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Republicans and Democrats take victory laps on long-term funding
The final bill that was passed on Wednesday was a deal between Republicans and Democrats, but both parties claimed that it was a win for their own causes.
Republicans in the House were able to protect the gun rights of veterans who have been found to be unable to handle their own benefits from the Veterans Affairs office. The extra policy was a big problem in the talks, and Democratic lawmakers who want stricter gun laws were worried about it.
In an early morning post on X (formerly Twitter), Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he would vote against the minibus because of the policy provision “which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year.”
Along with the gun policy rider, Johnson also called for cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
But Democrats were able to get an extra $1 billion for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. This means that the program will now cost $7 billion a year instead of $6 billion a year before. Like the gun policy clause, more money for WIC was a very contentious issue between negotiators.
Republicans also tried to make it harder to get abortion pills, but Democrats stopped them. This was a big win for people who support abortion rights.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said at a news conference Wednesday, “I’m really excited about the bills we’re going to deal with today because it’s nowhere near the 22% cuts that the House Republicans had threatened.”
Conservatives rage at House GOP leadership over spending bill
It wasn’t a surprise that Johnson got a lot of negative feedback from his right-wing colleagues about the bill that passed on Wednesday. Some officials on the right said the plan did not cut spending enough or make big policy wins for conservatives.
Members on the far right also complained about the return of earmarks in the spending bills. Earmarks are spending plans for specific projects that are attached to laws. They also said that border and migrant policy should have been changed.
In a blog post, R-Texas Rep. Chip Roy, who is part of the very conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that the bill “is littered with earmarks, fails to secure the border, and gives up on almost every GOP policy win.”
Bob Good, R-Va., chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters on Tuesday that “when we have one house, we ought to get half of our wins.” But when asked about the need for Democratic votes in a divided government, Good abruptly ended the talk on Capitol Hill. He looked angry.
Another member of the Freedom Caucus, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Wednesday that Johnson should have forced a partial government shutdown to get changes made to policies about the border and migrants.
But will Johnson be punished for not giving in to right demands, such as the threat of being fired from his leadership position? The answer Norman gave when asked was “Who knows.”