WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are rushing Friday to approve the final spending package needed for the current budget year, a long-awaited move that will regulate funding for federal agencies and push any threats of a government shutdown into the fall.
With spending for several key federal agencies set to expire at midnight Friday, the House and Senate are expected to pass a $1.2 trillion measure that combines six annual spending bills into one package. More than 70% of the money would go to defense.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is bringing up the bill through a streamlined process that requires two-thirds support for passage.
“It will pass. We are working on the bill and I expect quite a few,” Johnson said, referring to the leadership’s approach to rallying support for a bill.
While lawmakers could miss the midnight deadline for funding the government — action in the Senate could take time — the practical impact would be minimal. With most federal employees off duty this weekend and many government services funded by previous legislation, the shutdown would be largely incident-free unless things drag into Monday.
Lawmakers split this budget year’s spending bills into two parts as House Republicans rebelled against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for one massive, complex bill with little time to review it or to prevent a closure.
It has taken lawmakers six months this budget year to reach the finish line, with the process slowed by conservatives pushing for more policy mandates and sharper cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or the White House would consider. The impasse required some short-term emergency legislation to keep the agencies funded while negotiations continued.
The first full-year package of spending bills, which funded the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Interior, among others, passed Congress just hours two weeks ago before funding for those agencies expired. Now lawmakers are considering the second package in a similar scenario.
The House will vote first. Party leaders point to a more than 3% increase in defense spending as one reason Republicans should vote for it. The bill funds a 5.2% pay increase for service members.
“At a time when the world is on fire, more than ever we need to ensure we properly fund our country’s defense and support our troops,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise .
The 1,012-page bill also funds the departments of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Labor and others.
Non-defense spending will remain relatively flat compared to the previous year, although some, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, will take a hit, and many agencies will not see their budgets keep up with inflation.
When the two packages are combined, discretionary spending for the budget year will amount to about $1.66 trillion. That doesn’t include programs like Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country’s rising debt burden.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he expects more Republicans will vote against the second spending package than the first. That’s because Johnson is not abiding by a House rule that mandates lawmakers have 72 hours to review a bill before voting on it.
But adhering to the 72-hour rule would result in the loss of government funding for many important agencies. Some lawmakers also oppose some of the projects that members were able to secure in the bills for their congressional districts, often referred to as earmarks.
Meanwhile, more Democrats could also vote against the second spending bill due to provisions related to Israel and border policy.
House Republicans succeeded in securing a provision that would ban funding through March 2025 for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main provider of food, water and shelter to civilians in Gaza.
Republicans are calling for a halt to the agency’s funding after Israel alleged that a dozen agency employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack Hamas carried out in Israel.
But the ban has some lawmakers concerned because many aid groups say there is no way to replace their ability to deliver the humanitarian aid that the United States and others are trying to send to Gaza, where a quarter of the 2.3 million residents go hungry.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the leading Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the provision has caused some problems among Democratic members, but she also pointed out that Democrats were able to secure more humanitarian aid overall. It will increase by about $336 million from last year’s level.
“I think we’ll get there,” DeLauro said of Friday’s vote.
To win Republican support, Johnson has also touted some of the spending increases committed to around 8,000 additional detention beds for migrants awaiting immigration proceedings or removal from the country. That’s an increase of about 24% from current levels. Republican leadership also emphasized that more money was needed to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.
Democrats, meanwhile, boast a $1 billion increase for Head Start programs and new child care centers for military families. They also pitched a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100 million increase for Alzheimer’s disease research.
“We defeated bizarre cuts that would have been a blow to American families and our economy,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The spending in the bill largely mirrors an agreement that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck with the White House in May 2023, which capped spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling until January 2025 so the federal government could pay its bills keep paying.
Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers Thursday that last year’s deal, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, will save the federal government about $1 trillion over the next decade.
Members of both parties expressed frustration at how long the process has taken and that the end result was what so many had predicted. They warned all along that Republicans would not get the vast majority of policy mandates they sought, or that they would not make cuts beyond what McCarthy and the White House agreed to last year.
“We stayed within the maximums that Kevin McCarthy had negotiated. That would be the reality all the time,” said Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. “People were living in a dream world and thinking, ‘well, we’re going to something different than what McCarthy had an agreement with the president about.’”
McCarthy, R-Calif., was removed from the speakership a few months after securing the debt ceiling deal. Eight Republicans ultimately joined Democrats to oust McCarthy as chairman. And some of those unhappy with that deal are also unhappy with the spending package.
“I don’t know if they have the votes to approve this. We’ll see,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. “I’m working to get the votes to kill it.”
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Associated Press congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
