As Congress returns this week (the Senate reconvened on Tuesday while the House comes back on the 11th) after the August recess, there remains significant work to pass the FY24 appropriations bills. In order to prevent a government shut down on September 30th when funding ends, Congress needs to either pass the 12 appropriations bills or pass a short-term continuing resolution (CR) which keeps spending at its current levels so that Congress can have more time to pass the bills this fall. Leaders in both chambers have signaled agreement that a continuing resolution will be necessary to allow more time, but it is unclear if the CR will include additional policy provisions that could endanger its passage.
Where we’re at right now: The Senate has marked up and passed all 12 of its spending bills out of committee but none have been considered yet on the Senate floor. Senate leadership has signaled that they may bring them to the Senate floor this week. The House has marked up and passed in committee 10 of its spending bills but have not considered any on the House floor yet. The House still needs to markup the Labor-HHS-Education bill and Commerce-Justice-Science bill – both of which are important to UW and the higher education community. The Senate is using topline numbers agreed upon in the debt deal brokered earlier this year, while House Republicans have been using a lower number which means that there will be significant work required to reach any agreement. The debt deal brokered earlier this year includes a 1 percent across-the-board funding cut that would take effect next year if the government is still operating under any kind of short-term CR.
Read more about this here and view our FY24 Appropriations tracker here.