House sends Senate bill to avert shutdown

The House approved a $1.2 trillion government funding bill Friday, sending the sprawling package to the Senate hours before the deadline and officially capping off the fiscal 2024 appropriations process in the lower chamber.

The legislation — which includes six funding bills — cleared the House in an 286-134 vote, hours before a slew of agencies and programs are set to run out of funding.

The Senate is expected to quickly take up the package, with hopes of getting it over the finish line before midnight so lawmakers can avoid a lapse in funding and begin their two-week Easter recess. President Biden has said he will sign the bill.

The successful House vote puts a bookend on the fiscal 2024 appropriations process in the lower chamber, which dragged on for months with four short-term extensions, led to the first-ever toppling of a sitting Speaker, and incited bitter battles between hard-line conservatives and GOP leadership.

Top lawmakers are welcoming the conclusion of the drawn-out process.

“I’m delighted and relieved to be finally closing out fiscal year 2024,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said on the floor.

The vote is also a win of sorts for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who staved off a shutdown, got the package passed despite intense conservative criticism, and avoided having to pass a massive, end-of-year omnibus spending bill, which conservatives abhor. Hard-liners, however, have derided the pair of funding bills — known as minibuses — as a two-part omnibus.

Trouble, however, looms large for Johnson.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has emerged as one of his foremost critics, on Friday filed a motion to vacate against Johnson — the same mechanism that led to the ouster of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — following his endorsement of the trillion-dollar spending package.

“I respect our conference; I paid all my dues to my conference; I’m a member in good standing, and I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the House in chaos,” Greene said after the vote. “But this is basically a warning, and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time, and find a new Speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans in our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.”

Johnson has consistently said he is not concerned about a threat to his gavel.

Greene’s move is emblematic of the frustrations conservatives have aired through every twist and turn of the appropriations process, which has spanned months.

On the current package, they criticized the large price tag, inclusion of various spending priorities, the exclusion of some of their controversial policy riders, and the process by which the bill was brought to the floor.

The bill only got 101 GOP votes, while 112 Republicans voted against it. That broke the so-called Hastert rule, the principle that a Republican Speaker won’t bring to the floor a bill that has support from less than half the conference.

Johnson also waived the “72-hour rule,” instead giving lawmakers roughly a day and a half to read the legislative text. And he brought the bill to the floor under suspension of the rules, which eliminated conservatives’ ability to block the measure on a procedural vote but requires two-thirds support for passage.

The 1,012-page bill calls for $1.2 trillion in funding for the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services, and State, as well as general government, financial services and foreign operations. 

Defense spending sees a bump of more than 3 percent, in line with a deal struck last year between President Biden and House GOP leadership to limit federal spending. Nondefense funding is roughly flat when compared to the previous fiscal year.

Lawmakers have bemoaned having to vote on a sprawling funding package not long after it was rolled out in the dead of night the day before — a common practice in Washington. But members on both sides are already touting a list of wins for them and dings against the other side. 

Republicans point to investments on the border that they say allow for a greater focus on enforcement, including funding for 22,000 Border Patrol agents, boosts for border security technology and funding for 41,500 detention beds.

The bills don’t make the drastic cuts House Republicans sought in their partisan funding proposals from last year, but the party has also boasted what it calls a break from previous years when both sides would haggle over parity between defense and nondefense funding increases.

Some programs that see more modest cuts in the package include the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have cheered fending off the steep funding cuts pushed by Republicans, as well as a string of so-called “poison pill” riders, including measures targeting abortion access and diversity initiatives. 

The party has leaned in on funding boosts secured in early childhood education and health programs, including Head Start, Child Care and Development Fund block grants and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. 

The package also increases funding for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Health Resources and Services Administration. 

However, the bill has also notched criticism from the far reaches of both parties. 

Conservatives have bashed funding in areas such as FBI construction and certain Democratic-backed community projects, while coming out against overall funding levels in the package.

Progressives in both chambers have also criticized a concession secured by Republicans blocking dollars to UNRWA, a key United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees.

“Do they consider a win the fact that children are starving to death in Gaza and are going to be unable to get the food and medical supplies they need because of the lack of funding to UNRWA?” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told The Hill. “If that’s a win, I’d hate to see what a loss looks like.”