House and Senate leaders on Sunday announced a spending deal for government funding in 2024, the first step to averting a shutdown later this month even as that threat still looms.
The topline numbers agreed to by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer include $1.59 trillion for fiscal year 2024, with $886 billion for defense spending and $704 in non-defense spending. They also agreed to a $69 billion side deal in adjustments that will go toward non-defense domestic spending.
The side deal brings the non-defense spending figure to nearly $773 billion, a Democratic source told CNN, with spending close to $1.66 trillion overall.
While their agreement on funding levels will reduce the chances of a shutdown, there are still major hurdles facing Congress ahead of two funding deadlines: January 19 and February 2.
According to the Washington Post ;the agreement between Johnson and Schumer is for the same spending numbers that McCarthy and Biden negotiated back in May/June as part of the debt ceiling deal - and protects spending levels for both domestic and military programs.
It is also certain that Johnson is going to face a rebellion from the hardcore portion of his caucus. It will rely on Democratic votes to pass (Cue the calls for a motion to vacate…)
I don’t think this is really an agreement at all.
Johnson’s statement said it was agreement of the top line numbers for 2024 and that now negotiations will begin. So this is just like the shit they did last year – Democrats have negotiated what they think the final numbers are going to be while Republicans think they’ve negotiated the upper bound and are now free to use any and all leverage to push the number as low as possible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this kept going on every quarter.
So much looming
This is the best summary I could come up with:
House and Senate leaders on Sunday announced a spending deal for government funding in 2024, the first step to averting a shutdown later this month even as that threat still looms.
Schumer, meanwhile, said in a statement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries that the agreement on non-defense discretionary spending will allow Democrats to “protect key domestic priorities like veterans benefits, health care and nutrition assistance from the draconian cuts sought by right-wing extremists.”
“It will also allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats,” the pair wrote.
“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.”
President Joe Biden said Sunday, “The bipartisan funding framework congressional leaders have reached moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities.”
“It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring,” Biden said in a statement.
The original article contains 458 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Ah, so veterans’ benefits don’t fall under defense spending. Makes sense.
Also a question: That $886 billion is ~12% of the federal budget. Considering it’s ~55% of the amount allocated here, how/where is the rest of the federal budget allocated?
