Congressional leaders have struck a deal to keep the government open past a looming Sept. 30 deadline, after a previous effort to punt the funding fight into spring 2025 and attach a Trump-backed proof-of-citizenship voting bill failed.
The House is expected to move early next week on the legislation, also known as a continuing resolution (CR).
Here are a few items that made the cut — and a few that didn’t.
Funding into December
The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., is seen from the East Front Plaza on Friday, September 13, 2024.
The deal, rolled out Sunday afternoon, would keep the government funded through Dec. 20 to buy time to hash out a funding agreement for the rest of fiscal 2025.
The roughly three-month timeline is the preferred duration of Democrats and Republican defense hawks.
It comes after a bill containing a six-month stopgap, the time frame sought by conservatives, failed on the House floor. Republicans who supported the longer stopgap hoped it would lessen the chances of a massive end-of-year omnibus spending package, and potentially allow former President Trump more input over fiscal 2025 funding if he wins back the White House this fall.
However, House GOP aides noted on a call with reporters ahead of the bill’s unveiling that the concession does not mean Republicans have signed onto the idea of a near-Christmas omnibus deal, noting the lawmakers will “be likely having the same conversations” again at the end of the year.
Secret Service funding
A secret service agent is stationed outside the funeral of Ivana Trump on July 20, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
The bill includes $231 million in funding for the Secret Service in the wake of the apparent second assassination attempt against Trump.
The proposed funding for the Secret Service comes as the acting director, Ronald Rowe, has pushed for more resources for the agency.
Rowe said earlier this week that the agency needs to “make sure we’re getting the personnel that we have, and that requires us to be able to have the funding to be able to hire more people.”
However, some Republicans have raised questions over how further funding would help protect Trump in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Others have also pointed to the funding the agency has already received in recent years.
“They’re just not very effective right now. It’s hard for me to believe they didn’t have enough money, since we gave them more money than they asked for this fiscal year, that they couldn’t redeploy forces or whatever,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), head of the House’s top funding committee, said to reporters Thursday, adding the matter at hand is “more policy and using the resources they have wisely.”
House GOP leadership aides said the funding is “confined to help their immediate needs for campaign purposes,” as Trump and Vice President Harris enter the final stretch to Election Day. They also said there will be “a number of conditions” on the funding, including meeting congressional demands as its panels, including the House task force formed to investigate the July assassination attempt against Trump, conduct oversight of the agency.
SAVE Act
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks on Sept. 6, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The bill unveiled Sunday excludes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, despite Trump urging the party to fight to get the bill enacted this month, even if it means a shutdown.
Proponents say the measure would ensure that only citizens can vote in federal elections. It seeks to make it mandatory for states to obtain proof of citizenship to register voters and purge noncitizens from voter rolls.
Conservatives in the House, along with Trump, pushed to attach the measure — which passed the House as a stand-alone bill with unanimous Republican support earlier this year — but Republicans widely saw it as an opening offer to gain leverage in eventual negotiations with the Senate.
They acknowledged that the legislation would never get through the Democratic-led Senate or President Biden. Critics of the effort say it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and point out that it’s an exceedingly rare occurrence. The White House also argued the bill would make it more difficult for eligible voters to register.
While Trump pushed for a shutdown in the absence of the bill, most House Republicans say there is no appetite for letting funding lapse so close to an election.
Submarine funding
US Navy Virginia-class submarine USS North Carolina docks at the HMAS Stirling port in Rockingham on the outskirts of Perth on August 4, 2023.
Funding for the Virginia Class Submarine program that was included in the earlier GOP-backed plan is absent from the new stopgap plan.
The previous plan sought to appropriate about $2 billion to the Defense Department for the “shipbuilding and conversion” for the program. Aides said Sunday the funding fell out, however, after a “joint conversation” between appropriators, defense officials and the Biden administration.
At the same time, Senate Democratic appropriators say in a section-by-section breakdown of the bill that it would also extend the department’s authority for the duration of the stopgap to obligate funds for “military construction projects that first received funding in fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.”
VA shortfall
The bill also fails to address what the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has warned is a potential $12 billion shortfall facing the agency for fiscal 2025, despite pressure from Democrats.
However, the 46-page bill features a number of health care extensions for the VA, including measures appropriators say would extend its authority to provide nursing care to veterans with “service-connected disabilities,” as well as the authority for the joint Department of Defense-Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Facility Demonstration Fund.
Appropriators also say the bill would reallocate rescinded funds set aside for major construction for fiscal 2024 that weren’t “obligated in order for them to be available in fiscal year 2025.”
They also note inclusion of an extension of authority “for monthly assistance allowance for disabled veterans training in Paralympic and Olympic sports program.”
“VA currently allocates $2,000,000 to carry out the Paralympic and Olympic Sports program, which has not been increased in over ten years,” Democratic appropriators note, highlighting the bill “increases the funding allocation to $2,500,000 for each fiscal year from 2024 to 2027.”
The move comes after Congress passed legislation last week to address a more immediate $3 billion shortfall for the VA, as officials warned that benefit payments for veterans were at risk of being disrupted next month absent congressional action.
However, lawmakers say there is still more time to address the threat of the larger potential shortfall, and Republicans also say more information is needed from the agency surrounding the budget gap before Congress acts amid increased scrutiny over the VA’s budget management.
FEMA funding
The three-month stopgap excludes $10 billion in additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund that was previously included in House Republicans’ initial six-month plan. But it does allow the agency to use the fund’s resources faster for disaster response for the roughly three-month span.
“We made a joint decision to address, because it’s going to be a two and a half month CR, the disaster side with no additional disaster money,” the aides said Sunday, although they noted there is still disaster money in the bill in the form “of the disaster relief fund within FEMA being replenished as soon as the CR becomes law.”
The aides said the amount is “more than adequate for the two and a half month period,” and that “further conversations” will continue in the coming months on the matter.
Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell contributed.
