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WASHINGTON – After the House passed the bill on Friday, the Senate early Saturday passed a $1.2 trillion spending package to fund the government through September, narrowly avoiding a government shutdown.
Funding the government is perhaps Congress’ most basic responsibility, but chaos in the Republican-controlled House delayed passage of the bill by nearly six months. For the Washington Democrat tasked with negotiating a spending deal as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, achieving a spending deal was by no means a sure thing.
‘Would we have done this six months ago?’ That’s right,” Sen. Patty Murray said Thursday in an interview in her Capitol Hill office. “But I’ll be the first to say that no one thought we could do this.”
It was clear the bill would pass the Democratic-controlled Senate after the House narrowly reached the two-thirds majority needed to overcome Republican procedural objections. But by then, the House had closed for a two-week Easter recess, as Republican senators tried to force Democrats into a politically risky vote to block a last-minute amendment that would send the bill back to the House. Due to the distance, the final vote was postponed until the next meeting. Around 2am on Saturday.
Mr. Murray and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, agreed to split federal spending between then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden in 2023. Tough decisions had to be made to keep it below the limits imposed by the Moon agreement. . Funding for the Department of Defense and Homeland Security increased, but budgets were cut for some programs and agencies.
“That means we’re working with slightly less money on non-defense than we were a year ago, given rising costs,” said David Reich, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. -Leaning think tank and former Democratic aide on the House Appropriations Committee. “So the situation is a little bit tight and Congress has to make the right choices. It’s a really difficult question to set priorities.”
Mr Murray said his role required him to consider the needs of the country as a whole, but he always kept Washington state in mind. The package includes more than $3 billion to clean up the Hanford nuclear facility, the largest amount ever for a long-running project, and includes increased funding for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It is.
“We hear these things a lot at home, to a greater or lesser extent,” Murray said. “When I’m sitting here negotiating the last bill and people are putting things in and out, I can put my hand down and say, ‘No, it’s not going anywhere.’ Masu. “
The bill, which the Senate sent to Biden’s desk on Saturday, is the second of two government funding packages that account for about 70% of discretionary spending. The first, less controversial set of spending bills was passed two weeks ago. Most federal spending is mandatory and not subject to annual spending.
along with his colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). Murray and Collins will also have to contend with a vociferous faction of House Republican hardliners who ousted McCarthy in October and insisted that the House spending bill incorporate partisan policy changes that Democrats called a “poison pill.” There wasn’t.
G. William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the funding bill was passed despite these headwinds because of the legislative skill and deep experience of the four top appropriators. Stated. This Congress marks the first time in U.S. history that women hold all four leadership positions on committees.
Hoagland, who served as budget and appropriations director for then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) from 2003 to 2007, said, “I think Chairman Murray and influential member Collins have done a great job.” ” he said. “These are serious legislators. They know how to get things done.”
After Friday’s House vote, Granger, who had already announced her retirement at the end of the year, announced she would resign from the Appropriations Committee effective immediately. The news comes on the same day that another outgoing Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), said he would retire early and reduce the already slim Republican majority to one vote. Ta.
The House passed the bill Friday morning even though most of the Republican majority voted against it, as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) continued a pattern of relying on Democrats to enact major legislation. . That has sparked the ire of Republican hardliners, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, saying on Friday that it could lead to Johnson’s ouster, less than six months after his predecessor suffered the same fate. filed a specific motion.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane voted against the bill, as did Republican Rep. Russ Fulcher, who represents northern Idaho and areas west of Boise. In a statement, Fulcher expressed frustration that lawmakers had barely a day to consider the package after it was released early Thursday morning.
“We have $34 trillion in debt,” Fulcher said. “We need to cut wasteful spending and promote economic growth. This bill does the opposite.”
Sen. Jim Risch said before the vote that he opposed the measure, but said not passing the funding bill was not an option.
“Those of us who vote ‘no’ on every spending bill just hate the fact that we just keep spending money and no one talks about how we’re going to pay for it,” Risch said. Told.
“There’s some things in there that I really like, but there’s also things in there that I really, really hate. That’s all the bills that come in here, but the deciding factor for me is to cut back on spending. It’s just a constant effort without any effort at all.”
The Senate vote was 74-24, with 22 Republicans voting against it, including Risch and fellow Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo. Two Senate Democrats opposed the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado protested the lack of aid to Ukraine, and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont opposed cutting off all funding to U.N. agencies that provide aid to the Palestinians.
Many of the Republican votes for the bill in the House came from members of the House Appropriations Committee, including Rep. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside and Rep. Ryan Zinke of Whitefish, Montana. Mike Simpson of Idaho Falls did not vote.
“There are a lot of things that I strongly disagree with,” Zinke said of the fiscal policy. But the former interior secretary said passing another short-term extension to force the U.S. military to continue operating under the budget set for 2022 “puts this country at risk.”
“The world has changed dramatically since two years ago,” said Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander. “The military needs leeway to adjust its fire.”
Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution think tank, said lawmakers charged with funding the government tend to behave differently than other lawmakers.
“Sometimes you hear the joke that there are actually three parties in Congress: Democrats, Republicans, and the embezzlers,” Reynolds said. “And it’s certainly true that appropriators tend to have a somewhat different perspective on the legislative process, because they have some understanding of why it’s so important to get things done.”
Mr. Newhouse defended Mr. Johnson, saying that Mr. Johnson was “handled pretty hard” when he took over as Republican leader in late October.
“This is a compromise spending bill,” Newhouse said. “Even though we don’t have a majority and we don’t have control of the Senate, it still looks to me like we can get some wins in the Senate.”
When the six spending bills were announced Thursday, both parties quickly claimed victory. Republicans hailed Biden’s cuts of more than $100 billion from the originally requested budget, saying it was the first overall cut in spending to programs other than the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs in nearly a decade.
Democrats touted their success in eliminating dozens of partisan policy provisions that Republicans included in the House bill. The bill includes funding to help with living, education and medical expenses, as well as special immigrant visas for Afghans who have been living in limbo since fleeing the U.S. takeover of their country by the Taliban. This includes the addition of 12,000 new items.
“We’re not going to get bipartisan agreement until everyone walks out and says, ‘I won,'” Murray said.
Another big priority for Murray is child care, for which his funding plan includes a $1 billion increase.
“I think it’s a national issue,” Murray said. “People are not able to help their families financially because they don’t have a place to put their children. I think it’s having an impact because the children don’t have a safe place. That’s what we have. I think it’s impacting business – they can’t hire people. So I’ve been the appropriations chair this year and from the beginning I want to do whatever I can in each committee to address this issue. I was clear.”
Murray said the four women took the same approach as their predecessors, despite the extraordinary circumstances faced by top appropriators over the past year.
“We have an obligation to make sure that we function as a country,” she said. “And spending is central to that. I mean, if you look at a family’s budget, you can’t fight every day about how much to spend on food. We need certainty in this country, not chaos. I strongly felt that.”
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