5 hours ago — The most pressing challenge is a pair of fast-approaching funding deadlines to prevent a government shutdown. Congressional leaders announced Sunday they had ...
Congress returns from holidays facing battles over spending, foreign aid and immigration
- Congressional leaders announced Sunday they had reached a deal on an overall spending level for the remainder of 2024, putting them one step closer to avoiding another shutdown.
- Congress is also trying to strike a deal on border security and immigration policy that has become central to passing more aid for Ukraine, with lawmakers continuing talks over an emergency spending package that the Biden White House has requested.
Another government shutdown
- In September, Congress reached a last-minute deal to fund the government through mid-November just hours before it was set to shutdown.
- Facing the November deadline, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, made the unusual decision to stagger the expiration dates of federal funding.
- Hard-right members in the House have been adamantly opposed to passing the short-term funding extensions, known as continuing resolutions, preferring instead to fund the government through 12 appropriations bills.
- But so far none of the annual appropriations bills have made it through both the GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate.
- The House has passed seven individual spending bills, while the Senate passed three that were wrapped into one package.
- Johnson and his predecessor, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, both had to rely on Democrats to get last year's continuing resolutions through the lower chamber.
- The move led to the end of McCarthy's speakership.
- Johnson vowed not to take up another short-term continuing resolution.
However, Johnson previously said that he'd support a full-year continuing resolution if no deal is reached by the deadlines. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called that option "simply unacceptable" because it would effectively cut defense spending.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had similar criticisms, saying a full-year stopgap bill would cause major disruptions across the government. She called on Johnson to stick to the spending deal reached months ago by Mr. Biden and McCarthy, who retired at the end of the year.
- Hard-right Republicans have repeatedly demanded steeper cuts than what was agreed upon.
- Johnson said the agreement announced Sunday "will not satisfy everyone" because it doesn't "cut as much spending as many of us would like," but touted it as the "most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade."
- The agreement will "allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats," they said in a statement Sunday.
- They said they "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."
Border security and Ukraine funding
- Mr. Biden's request for $106 billion in foreign aid has been stalled for weeks amid demands from Republicans — even those supportive of Ukraine assistance — that the package include stricter border security provisions and immigration policy changes.
- Meanwhile, Democrats and the White House want Ukraine and Israel aid paired.
- The House passed a Republican-backed bill in November to provide Israel with $14.3 billion in emergency aid as it fights its war against Hamas.
- But the bill was dead on arrival in the Senate because it conditioned the aid on cutting an equivalent amount from IRS funding.
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