House GOP leaders released the legislative text of their deal with the White House to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 and set a framework for passing annual appropriations bills, beginning with a 72-hour clock before the House vote on Wednesday.
Republicans plan to call votes on a series of suspension bills Tuesday to bring lawmakers back to Washington after the Memorial Day weekend. The Rules Committee will meet at 3 pm on Tuesday to set the parameters of the debate, and the chamber is expected to vote on Wednesday night after the stock market closes.
Details of the 99-page bill, released Sunday, largely follow fact sheets and talking points released by both sides the night before. It would set limits on discretionary spending levels, restore some pandemic aid and tax enforcement funding, strengthen work requirements for safety-net programs, streamline energy project approvals and so on. But the text also clarifies some things that were not clear before.
[Bipartisan deal reached to raise debt limit, cap appropriations]
Nondefense appropriations
One of the key questions is how much funding will be allocated for non-defense programs outside of veterans’ medical care, as Republicans say a cut below the level in fiscal 2022 while Democrats say the accounts are close to what was appropriated for the current fiscal year.
The total amount of “capped” non-defense spending in fiscal 2024 will be cut by nearly $40 billion below this year’s nearly $704 billion, a 5 percent reduction.
But VA health care will be protected from any cuts. While not specified in the text, the agreement assumes a $121 billion discretionary level. Along with a special mandatory add-on stemming from last year’s law that created a new toxic exposure benefit program, the bill would allow for a nearly $19 billion total increase in health care VA health, or 16 percent.
All told, nondefense funding outside of veterans’ medical care will be cut by about $42 billion or 7 percent lower this year, to $583 billion. But in reality, appropriators are allowed several additions outside of the caps that will help make up the difference and keep funding roughly flat from this year.
The bill provides offsets for higher spending in fiscal 2024 by revoking about $28 billion in unspent pandemic relief, plus $1.4 billion in mandatory IRS funding set aside for this year in the 2022 stimulus law. back to the budget. Then there is an informal understanding that another $10 billion in mandatory IRS funding will be returned in each of fiscal 2024 and 2025.
Overall, the White House estimates non-defense, non-veteran spending to reach $637 billion in fiscal 2024 after “agreed-upon changes.” That’s just $1 billion less than the comparable figure this fiscal year, officials said.
To reach their $637 billion figure — a $54 billion jump from the base funding level of $583 billion — White House officials appear to be relying on repurposing unspent pandemic aid and the IRS tax enforcement money amounting to $39 billion.
It is not clear where the remaining $15 billion in “changes” will come from. But Biden’s February budget proposes to double the $15 billion Congress usually credits in appropriations from certain “mandatory program changes” — primarily a pull from the Program’s unspent balance. of Children’s Health Insurance. Another option is “emergency” designations for programs that may receive appropriations subject to caps.
In addition, the bill would apply a separate $11 billion in each of fiscal years 2024 and 2025 for “nonrecurring expense funds” to the Commerce Department, created in the fiscal 2020 spending law. The money will be used to “carry out programs related to the efficiency of the Government,” the bill says.
Caps for two years, or six?
The bill would split discretionary spending into separate caps for defense and nondefense programs in fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, and then a unified cap for the next four-year period. Each year after fiscal 2024, limited spending will be allowed to grow by 1 percent.
There is only one “sequester” mechanism for the first two years of the agreement, however. If the final spending bills breach the separate defense and nondefense caps, then the accounts in those categories will be cut across the board back to the levels set in the bill. In future years, the sequester will not be used.
The unenforceable nature of the upcoming caps may help assuage the concerns of GOP defense hawks like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who fears the bill could lock in lower military spending. As it stands, the measure would allow for a 3 percent growth in defense in fiscal 2024, to $886 billion, and then another percent in fiscal 2025, to $895 billion.
Another provision, an “automatic” continuing resolution, would cut spending 1 percent below current year levels as part of stopgap funding needed to avoid a partial government shutdown if appropriations bills are not met. law on January 1. The provision applies only to the fiscal 2024 and 2025 spending measures.
‘Change’
The leaders of the two parties earlier in the day tried to clear the hatches after the tentative agreement announced Saturday night left many questions on the actual details.
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen says lawmakers must act by June 5 or the country could miss paying its financial obligations, causing a potential US credit downgrade or worse.
“The deal averted the worst possible crisis: a default for the first time in our nation’s history,” Biden said Sunday night in a brief press conference at the White House.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy called the bill “transformational” in terms of the spending cuts and controls it would impose. The California Republican said the bill passed by the House in April framed the terms of the bipartisan agreement.
“You can’t get everything everyone wants,” McCarthy said at a Capitol press conference. “But that, with divided government, that’s where we end up.”
McCarthy said he would deliver votes from the majority of his conference when the bill comes up.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expects more Democrats to support the deal. But he explained that the onus is on Republicans to deliver the majority of votes in the House.
“My understanding is that they are committed to making at least 150 votes, if not more,” he said. “They negotiated this deal with the White House, and I expect them to cast a lot of votes to get it over the finish line.”
However, Jeffries made it clear that there are reasons for his party to support the measure. “President Biden delivered a result that avoided a catastrophic default, that kept us from collapsing our economy and stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from triggering a job-killing recession, ” he said.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 102 members, but the chair of the group, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, did not reject the broad outlines of the package during her own Sunday show appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Jayapal said that he was “unhappy with some of the things I heard about,” but that he was waiting to see the text before judging. He also said Republicans “didn’t get what they said they wanted” in the negotiations, and that some exemptions to work requirements could ease those concerns.
Another issue for progressives will be language that streamlines the National Environmental Policy Act’s process for approving energy and infrastructure projects.
Democrats did not get a provision they sought that would have required states, localities and utilities to coordinate building an interregional transmission system to help move power to areas in need.
And the measure would greenlight the Mountain Valley Pipeline to move natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia, a victory for West Virginia Sens. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, and Republican Shelley Moore Capito. The project has faced criticism from environmental groups and is years behind schedule, in part due to permitting delays and court challenges.
Barrier rules
The first hurdle is getting through the House Rules Committee, where Republicans have a 9-4 edge but three of the GOP panel members are staunch conservatives on budget issues: Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Roy and Norman each came out on Twitter against the deal so quickly: Norman called the deal “crazy” and Roy called it a “turd-sandwich.” In response to a commenter on Roy’s twitter page urging him to stop the passage of the bill, Roy replied: “We’ll try.”
If no Democrats support the rule, which is not a certainty, and Roy and Norman end up voting “no” in committee then it could fall to Massie to save the package.
Massie won the inclusion of his proposal to impose a cross-the-board cut in stopgap funding if Congress hadn’t enacted the appropriations bills, however. Massie has also said in the past that he is willing to vote for the rules even if he opposes the corresponding bill.
And Massie explained that he would not automatically ‘no’ the debt limit bill before it was released: “The text of the bill is king, and the text of the bill has not been released,” he tweeted earlier. on Sunday.
Noting that the measure passed the House on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer told colleagues in a letter on Sunday that he would immediately begin the process of calling it for a vote in the Senate. “Due to the time it will take to process the legislation in the Senate without cooperation, Senators should prepare for potential votes on Friday and the weekend,” Schumer wrote.
Senate Democrats held a caucus meeting Sunday night to discuss the package. A source familiar with the meeting said it was “positive” and that the caucus “understands the need to avoid default”.
Senate GOP conservatives including Utah’s Mike Lee and Kentucky’s Rand Paul appear likely to try to slow the process. But the threat of votes over the weekend could be calculated to try to facilitate a deal where holdouts would receive amendment votes in exchange for speeding up the debate.
Aidan Quigley and Lindsey McPherson contributed to this report.
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