Accusing Republicans of abandoning the bipartisan deal on 2024 spending levels that was agreed to just last month, the White House said Monday that President Joe Biden would veto a pair of appropriations bills currently making their way through the lower chamber, should they make it to his desk.
Two of 12 appropriations measures Congress needs to pass before the end of the fiscal year in September, the bills provide less funding than defined by the bipartisan agreement. Republicans are expected to bring the bills – H.R. 4366, which covers appropriations for military construction and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and H.R. 4368, which covers Agriculture, Rural Development and the Food and Drug Administration – to the House floor for a vote this week.
Saying that the Biden administration “negotiated in good faith with the Speaker on bipartisan legislation to avoid a first-ever default and protect the Nation’s hard-earned and historic economic recovery,” the White House noted that in addition to lower funding levels, the appropriations bills include recissions would reduce funding for clean energy initiatives, as well as new policy provisions that would reduce access to reproductive healthcare and threaten the safety of sexual minorities.
“House Republicans had an opportunity to engage in a productive, bipartisan appropriations process, but instead, with just over two months before the end of the fiscal year, are wasting time with partisan bills that cut domestic spending to levels well below the FRA [Fiscal Responsibility Act] agreement and endanger critical services for the American people,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.
Long way to Biden’s desk: The House bills will have to make it through the Senate before they can get to the White House, and it’s unlikely they will survive without significant alteration. Senate committees are writing their own versions of the bills, which not only stick to the agreed spending levels but add billions more in “emergency” appropriations. Lawmakers will have to hash out the differences between the two chambers before Congress can send the bills to Biden, and that could take some time.
Shutdown becoming more likely: By effectively rejecting the 2024 spending deal – which they say defined only upper limits on spending, with lower levels still an option – House conservatives are raising the odds of a government shutdown occurring when funding runs out at the end of September.
In addition to spending levels, conservatives may be unhappy if the House fails to pass each of the 12 spending bills as a separate piece of legislation. House Speaker McCarthy has backed away from his pledge to do so, indicating that some of the spending bills could be combined into “minibus” bills. And the many cultural issues that are being targeted by the House GOP in the appropriations bills – including abortion access, diversity training and health care for transsexuals – will likely make it that much more difficult for lawmakers to come to an agreement.
TD Cowen analyst Chris Krueger wrote Monday that “at this point, a government shutdown seems like a question of when in 2023, not if.” Reviewing the dynamics of a shutdown, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein recalled that the most recent government shutdown, in 2018, was over an inability of Congress to agree on funding for a hot-button issue, the border wall with Mexico.
Still, Congress can always pass a continuing resolution that maintains funding at current levels – an option that some analysts think is becoming more likely by the day. But unlike in the past, there is now a built-in limit to how long a continuing resolution can last. Under the terms of the spending agreement, if Congress cannot pass appropriations bills by the end of the calendar year, automatic spending cuts of 1% kick in – a reduction that would hit the military particularly hard given the structure of the deal.
The bottom line: Congress leaves town at the end of the week for its August recess and won’t be back until after Labor Day. Lawmakers will then have just a few weeks to figure out an agreement on 2024 spending before the fiscal year ends on September 30. At this point, there is little hope that they will finish their work by then, suggesting that this fall could be filled with ongoing skirmishes over 2024 spending levels, potentially culminating in an all-out battle just before the winter holidays.