Congress Reaches $1.59 Trillion Bipartisan Spending Deal to Avert Possible Shutdown
Congressional leaders managed to reach a topline federal spending deal for 2024, which represents a considerable step to avoid a possible government shutdown in the near future.
House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed the $1.59 trillion spending deal in a letter to his fellow representatives on Sunday, saying that “After many weeks of dialogue and debate, we have secured hard-fought concessions to unlock the FY-24 topline numbers and allow the Appropriations Committee to finally begin negotiating and completing the twelve annual appropriations bills.”
The bill allocates $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for nondefense spending.
“While the levels of emergency spending from FY23 will be maintained, no additional emergency funding, or additional no-outlay changes in mandatory programs (CHIMPS), will be included,” the letter goes on to say. “The concessions we achieved will include an additional $10 billion in cuts to the IRS mandatory funding (for a total of $20 billion), which was a key part of the Democrats’ ‘Inflation Reduction Act.'”
Hill leaders announce spending deal, setting top line spending at $1.59 trillion, the level agreed to in the debt limit law. But there are still hurdles ahead to avoid a shutdown (such as immigration.)
They outline deal here: pic.twitter.com/98PEyBkWs8
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 7, 2024
The announcement also held the news of a $6.1 billion funding cut to Covid-era spending, and Johnson summarized it as “the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade.”
Concerns of a potential shutdown have been resurfacing in recent days, and while certain federal programs were on track to run out of funding, the deal will allow the House and Senate to focus on drafting new legislation to keep spending going.
