on Saturday signed a $460 billion package of spending bills approved by the Senate in time to avoid a shutdown of many key federal agencies. The legislation’s success gets lawmakers about halfway home in wrapping up their appropriations work for the 2024 budget year.In signing it into law, Biden thanked leaders and negotiators from both parties in both chambers for their work, which the White House said will mean that agencies “may continue their normal operations.
“I would urge my colleagues to stop playing with fire here,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the top-ranking Republican member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It would be irresponsible for us not to clear these bills and do the fundamental job that we have of funding government. What is more important?”
Republicans were able to keep non-defense spending relatively flat compared with the previous year. Supporters say that’s progress in an era when annual federal deficits exceeding $1 trillion have become the norm. But many Republican lawmakers were seekingThe House Freedom Caucus, which contains dozens of the GOP’s most conservative members, urged Republicans to vote against the first spending package and the second one still being negotiated.
”This isn’t the package I would have written on my own,” said Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But I am proud that we have protected absolutely vital funding that the American people rely on in their daily lives.”Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., pauses to speak to reporters outside the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Even though lawmakers find themselves passing spending bills five months into the budget year, Republicans are framing the process as improved nonetheless because they broke the cycle of passing all the spending bills in one massive package that lawmakers have little time to study before being asked to vote on it or risk a government shutdown. Still, others said that breaking up funding into two chunks of legislation war hardly a breakthrough.
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