Republican and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill said on Sunday they reached agreement on top-line Federal government funding levels for fiscal year 2024, and the White House voiced its support for that agreement.
But the amount of work that remains to be done by lawmakers to translate the top-line agreement into necessary budget legislation leaves open the possibility that further continuing resolution (CR) funding will come into play.
According to a Jan. 7 dear colleague letter from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the agreement on top-line budget figures tracks the terms of the Fiscal Responsibility Act approved by Congress in June 2023.
That law increased the U.S. national debt limit through early 2025, allows for a 3.3 percent increase in defense spending for FY2024, caps Federal non-defense discretionary spending in FY2024 close to FY2023 levels, and limits non-defense spending increases to one percent in FY2025.
“The topline constitutes $1.590 trillion for FY24 – the statutory levels of the Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Speaker Johnson said in his Jan. 7 letter. “That includes $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for nondefense.”
The House Speaker said the agreement with House and Senate Democrats on top-line funding for FY2024 also includes an acceleration of the $20 billion reduction in already-approved funding for IRS modernization spending, and the elimination of $6.1 billion of unspent COVID-19 relief funding.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said the agreement on top-line funding figures “clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown.”
But it also leaves a lot of legislative work to be done in a very short time period before current Federal government funding is set to expire.
Under CR legislation approved by Congress in November 2023, some agencies – including the Departments of Transportation, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs – are now funded at FY2023 levels only through Jan. 19. Most others are funded through Feb. 2.
With the top-line funding agreement in place, Speaker Johnson told his Republican colleagues that the deal will “allow the Appropriations Committee to finally begin negotiating and completing the twelve annual appropriations bills.”
At the same time, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries said that the “the bipartisan topline appropriations agreement clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown.”
“Now the Appropriations Committees, led by Chair Patty Murray and Vice Chair Susan Collins in the Senate and Chairwoman Kay Granger and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro in the House, can prepare full-year appropriations bills, free of poison pill policy changes,” they said. “Both sides will need to work together in a bipartisan way and avoid a costly and disruptive shutdown.”
That leaves 11 days for both houses of Congress to create, approve, and reconcile their FY2024 spending bills and get them to President Biden for his signature before funding for several big government agencies runs out.
Commenting on the top-line funding agreement on social media, Mike Hettinger, president and founding principal at Hettinger Strategy Group, said, “FWIW, what’s agreed to here will not prevent a shutdown unless somehow they pass four spending bills written against these top lines in 11 days (or another CR).”
