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Congressional leaders announced Sunday an agreement on topline annual spending levels of $1.59 trillion, a critical step to avoid a government shutdown that keeps in line with a previous bipartisan budget agreement struck last year to raise the nation’s debt limit.
The fiscal year 2024 deal, which would run through September, follows statutory spending levels laid out in last year’s debt-limit agreement struck between President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. It includes nearly $900 billion for defense and almost $800 billion for nondefense discretionary spending.
The first deadline to avoid a partial shutdown is Jan. 19, when Congress must pass funding bills for certain tranches of government like agriculture, energy and water, Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The next funding deadline for a partial shutdown, which includes the rest of the government, will be Feb. 2.
Despite the major step forward, significant hurdles remain. Appropriators must now craft legislative text and hammer out the remaining details as congressional leaders race to sell the deal to their members, a tough sell for House conservatives who have insisted on steep cuts as the U.S. surpassed $34 trillion in debt.
House Republican leaders, Senate Democratic leaders and Mr. Biden all touted the agreement as a victory.
Democratic leaders noted that they successfully rejected slashing money from Mr. Biden’s pandemic-era stimulus or his climate change agenda under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We have made clear to Speaker Mike Johnson that Democrats will not support including poison pill policy changes in any of the twelve appropriations bills put before the Congress,” said a joint statement from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “Both sides will need to work together in a bipartisan way and avoid a costly and disruptive shutdown.”
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, wrote in a letter to House Republican colleagues that the deal honors the McCarthy-Biden agreement and that they achieved a topline number of $30 billion less than what the Senate proposed, $6 billion in COVID rescissions and an accelerated timeline for $20 billion in IRS cuts.
Mr. Johnson said the cuts, though small, were tantamount to the first non-VA, non-defense spending reductions since fiscal year 2017. He acknowledged that there would be frustration within the GOP conference that more was not accomplished.
“While these final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like,” Mr. Johnson said the deal will allow Congress to move forward on the budget process.
Some hardline conservatives in the House have threatened to vote against funding the government until southern border security policies are strengthened to slow the record flow of migrants, but those policies are being negotiated separately in the Senate as part of a broader $110 billion national security package for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
The backlash against Mr. Johnson was swift and fierce from some, including the House Freedom Caucus, which called the funding deal a “total failure.”
“It’s even worse than we thought. Don’t believe the spin,” the group said. “Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is $1.658 trillion — not $1.59 trillion.”
Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana, a member of the caucus and candidate for U.S. Senate, referred to the agreement as a “D.C. cartel spending deal” and said Democrats were only forced to make “microscopic concessions.”
Mr. Johnson said Sunday in an interview that aired on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that it remains a “hypothetical question” whether he’d hold a vote on such an agreement because its details remain secret. But he added that Republicans “of course want a deal” on U.S.-Mexico border security.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the lead Republican negotiating with Democrats and the White House said bill text could come as early as this week.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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