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The Government is Funded Again

Final Passage

At 2:03 am on 3/23, the Senate passed by 74-24 the last - for the current fiscal year 2024 - piece of legislation to fund the government until 9/30/24 at 11:59pm. The House passed it earlier on 3/22 by 286-134. The President signed it later on 3/23. Even though final passage was a little after the shutdown deadline, the government did not shut down because it was clear that passage was on its way.

What's in the Bill?

The bill is H.R. 2882: Making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2024, and for other purposes and it's another giant chunk of legislation of about 1,000 pages.

You certainly can read it, but we did gather some summary information on included elements.

What Democratic leadership shared with their members according to John Bresnahan of Punchbowl:

  • No poison pill anti abortion, LGBTQ or DEI policy riders
  • Significant increase in child care $
  • DoD climate resilience
  • Humanitarian assistance
  • Afghan SIVs
  • Increased Title 1 Funding
  • Rejected HR2 provisions

What Republican leadership shared with their members according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl:

  • ICE beds went from 34k to 42k
  • 22k border agents
  • 25% increase on border technology
  • 20% cut to NGOs
  • troop pay increase said to be the largest in 40 years.
  • cuts to pentagon DEI programs
  • cuts to DOD climate programs.
  • no funding to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)
  • 6% cut to foreign aid
  • only US flag at all diplomatic facilities
  • Prevents banning gas stoves
  • Hyde amendment maintained (The Hyde Amendment bans federal funding for abortions and has been passed every year since 1976 when it was first proposed.)

Additional Information:

  • Eva McKend of CNN reported that the US House Office of Diversity and Inclusion will be dissolved as part of the government spending bill that passed today, the office’s director said. We wrote about a proposal to eliminate this office last year. It's not clear yet whether the language in the bill we wrote about made it into the appropriations, but our summary should provide a good sense of the motivations behind the Republicans objections to the office.

Earmarks

Jack Fitzpatrick of Bloomberg Government summarized some earmarks information. Of particular interest is how legislators found workarounds to ensure that earmarks they were committed to made it into the passed bill. Useful information if you have a local project that you'd like your representative to champion.

— 03/25/2024 11:49 a.m.