House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Jan. 7 announced that he had reached a deal with Senate Democrats and the White House on top-line spending numbers, a key step in the race to avert a government shutdown in the coming weeks.
Mr. Johnson announced the development in a “Dear Colleague” letter circulated to lawmakers.
“After many weeks of dialogue and debate, we have secured hard-fought concessions to unlock the FY 24 top-line numbers and allow the Appropriations Committee to finally begin negotiating and completing the twelve annual appropriations bills,” Mr. Johnson said.
The proposal suggests a top-line figure of $1.590 trillion for fiscal year 2024.
That figure, in line with the statutory requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, passed last year, includes $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for non-defense expenditures.
Mr. Johnson boasted that the tentative agreement would include an additional $16 billion in spending cuts over the previously negotiated framework and a $30 billion overall reduction compared to the Senate’s original spending plan.
Under the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, one of the final legislative acts of the 117th Congress, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was granted $60 billion in funding. Undoing this funding has been a key priority for Republican lawmakers in the 118th Congress.
The new deal would entail that roughly a third of that, $20 billion total, will be cut.
Additionally, Mr. Johnson boasted a $6.1 billion reduction in COVID-era “slush funds,” which he said Republicans won “despite fierce opposition from the White House.
“The result is real savings to American taxpayers and real reductions in the federal bureaucracy,” he wrote.
He acknowledged that “these final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like.”
But he extolled the deal nonetheless, saying: “This deal does provide us a path to 1) move the process forward; 2) reprioritize funding within the top-line towards conservative objectives, instead of last year’s Pelosi-Schumer omnibus; and 3) fight for the important policy riders included in our House FY24 bills.”
The deal is an important milestone in negotiations between the Democrat upper chamber and Republican lower chamber.
Previously, the House marked up spending levels below the amounts included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a deal negotiated by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), which raised the debt ceiling and sought to provide a framework for future spending negotiations.
Meanwhile, the Senate marked up bills above the amounts included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
Democrat Reaction
However, Democrats were quick to praise the tentative agreement.In a joint statement, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the top-line agreement “clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people and avoid a government shutdown.”
They said that the non-defense funding provided by the deal would allow them to “protect key domestic priorities like veterans benefits, health care and nutrition assistance from the draconian cuts sought by right-wing extremists.”
The White House also praised the agreement, saying it “moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities.”
President Joe Biden wrote, “Now, congressional Republicans must do their job, stop threatening to shut down the government and fulfill their basic responsibility to fund critical domestic and national security priorities, including my supplemental request. It’s time for them to act.”
Under a stopgap spending bill passed by Mr. Johnson last year, the U.S. will go into a partial government shutdown on Jan. 19 if spending bills are not agreed to.
The topline agreement is far from a guarantee against a shutdown.
Negotiators will still need to determine the spending packages’ specifics within the agreed-upon constraints.
Due to GOP opposition, the legislation will almost certainly need Democratic support to pass the House—support that Democrats warned would not be forthcoming should Republicans include any “poison pills” in the spending legislation.
“Both sides will need to work together in a bipartisan way and avoid a costly and disruptive shutdown,” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries said.
The House will return to Capitol Hill to begin crafting the spending legislation on Jan. 9, with only eight legislative days to reach an agreement.
