House Dems Push a $1 Trillion Spending Package

Plus, the incredible shrinking IRS

House Democrats Push Ahead with $1 Trillion Spending Package

The congressional showdown over 2020 spending is set to enter its next phase this week as House Democrats push ahead with a “minibus” package of five appropriations bills totaling nearly $1 trillion in discretionary spending.

The Democrats are moving ahead even as lawmakers have not yet reached a deal to raise budget caps and set top-line spending levels that would avoid steep, automatic cuts from taking effect.

The House package includes the two largest of 12 must-pass annual spending bills, those for Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. It also includes funding for energy and water, the State Department and foreign operations as well as money for the legislative branch.

The push by House Democrats to pass their funding bills represents an aggressive opening bid in a budget battle that has the two sides sharply divided over spending priorities, especially on domestic programs. The Democrats have proposed roughly $1.3 trillion in total discretionary spending for next year, including a $34 billion increase for programs such as health and education and a $17 billion boost for the military.

The House Rules Committee is set to take up the first minibus package on Monday evening, Roll Call reports, and will decide which of the hundreds of amendments submitted by members will come up for debate by the full House, with a vote there scheduled for Wednesday.

Among the contentious issues in the package is a potential pay raise for members of Congress. The spending package would allow a cost-of-living pay increase for the first time since 2009, giving lawmakers now earning $174,000 a year a $4,500 raise. But members in both parties have filed amendments to keep salaries frozen.

A final vote on the first minibus likely won’t happen until next week. The five-bill package is likely to be approved by House, but will likely have to change considerably before it can pass the Republican-controlled Senate and get White House approval.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says he wants to pass all 12 of the required appropriations bills for 2020 through the House by the end of the month, which would allow time for negotiations with the Senate on final spending levels before the start of the new fiscal year in October.

A second minibus package will include five appropriations bills totaling about $383 billion covering commerce, justice and science; agriculture, rural development and the Food and Drug Administration; interior, environment military construction and veterans affairs; and transportation and housing and urban development, according to The Hill.

Senate GOP Leaders to Discuss Spending Bills with White House

On the Senate side, Republican leaders will meet with White House officials on Tuesday afternoon to discuss stalled negotiations with Democrats over government funding bills for 2020, Politico’s Burgess Everett reports:

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama and other Republican appropriators will meet with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought on Tuesday afternoon, according to three people familiar with the matter.”

Everett adds that Senate Republicans “are trying to figure out whether they can begin moving spending bills absent a two-year spending agreement.”

The Battle Over the 2020 Defense Spending Bill

The House Armed Services Committee will begin its review of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, in a process that is expected to last a dozen hours or more. Committee staffers said they hope to bring the bill to the House floor for a vote soon after the July 4 break. The Senate Armed Services Committee has already advanced its version of the NDAA, potentially setting the stage for a compromise deal sometime this summer between the Democratic-led bill from the House and Republican-led one from the Senate.

Members of the committee will attempt to resolve differences on spending levels and specific defense policies during the markup session. Democrats have defined an overall spending level of $733 billion for defense in 2020, with $664 billion for the base budget and $69 billion for the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), the ranking Armed Services Committee member, said that he was concerned that Democrat’ proposed topline falls short of the $750 in overall spending requested by President Trump — a difference that will have to be hammered out before the bill can proceed to the House floor.

Some of the issues that could receive attention:

  • Border wall funds: The House bill currently blocks defense funds from being used for barriers on the border with Mexico and limits the amount of money that the Pentagon can shift to build new barriers.

     
  • Space Force: Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said Monday that lawmakers have agreed on a plan to create a new Space Force, though their plan differs from those proposed by the White House and by the Senate. “The main difference is less bureaucracy,” Smith said, adding that the House version features fewer generals, a smaller staff and a lower overall budget.

     
  • Nuclear weapons: The House bill blocks the deployment of a controversial new submarine-launched low-yield nuclear warhead. The bill also blocks the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, a proposed replacement for the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system. And the chair of the committee said he wants to start a debate about the overall size and cost of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which he says is too large and too expensive.

     
  • Guantanamo Bay: The House bill currently blocks the Pentagon from sending new prisoners to the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

     
  • Surveillance treaty: The bill prevents the Trump administration from withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows signatories to engage in unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the 34 participating nations. Republicans have charged that Russia is failing to honor the treaty. 

But again, as lawmakers battle over billions for defense, they have to keep an eye on a related issue: Congress and the White House still need to make a deal to raise the budget caps set in place by the Budget Control Act in order to pass anything like this level of defense spending. Without a deal, defense spending will be cut to $576 billion in 2020.

Chart of the Day: The Decline in IRS Enforcement

Reviewing a recent annual report on tax statistics from the IRS, Robert Weinberger of the Tax Policy Center says it “tells a story of shrinking staff, fewer audits, and less customer service.” The agency had 22% fewer personnel in 2018 than it did in 2010, and its enforcement budget has fallen by nearly $1 billion, Weinberger writes. One obvious effect of the budget cuts has been a sharp reduction in the number of audits the agency has performed annually, which you can see in the chart below.

Tweet of the Day

From Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation:

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