The House voted 230 – 197 to approve a continuing resolution (CR) that would fund the government through February 16 and renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years. It does not include any immigration provisions to address DACA, Dreamers, or the border.
The measure goes on to the Senate.
both chambers of Congress passed yet another FY2018 continuing resolution this evening, the House by a vote of 231-188 and the Senate by a vote of 66-32. This most recent CR would keep the government running through 19 January, and has been sent to the president for his signature, just a day before the current CR is set to expire.
To avoid a Christmas shutdown, the the House released the text of a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the federal government through January 19, 2018 late Wednesday night. Conservatives and defense hawks wanted a full Pentagon budget adopted, the measure was certain to be rejected in the Senate, where Democrats were poised to block it. However, the House leadership concession to defense hawks the CR would add $4 billion for missile defense and $700 million to repair damaged Navy ships.
The measure also would include some temporary extensions for the Children’s Health Insurance Program until March 31, the National Flood Insurance Program, and an extension of the Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until January 19.
Of final note, the CR includes language to waive the $125 billion in statutory automatic “PAYGO” cuts that would otherwise be triggered because of the $1.5 trillion cost of the tax bill which Congress passed earlier this week.
The House and Senate have adjourned until the new year.
Meanwhile, with the PAYGO provisions waived, the White House will have a signing ceremony for the tax bill passed earlier this week.
Totaling $81 billion, the supplemental spending bill (HR 4667) released Monday evening is $37 billion more than the $44 billion the Trump Administration requested in mid-November. As supplemental appropriations, the money is designated as emergency spending, which does not require offsets under congressional budget rules. The White House included a list of offsets, which can be found here.
If approved as is, this latest disaster aid bill would bring the emergency spending total to $132.75 billion this year — significantly surpassing the $60 billion spent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the $120 billion appropriated after Hurricane Katrina.
The bill includes:
The bill includes language that would allow individuals who have lost property to wildfires to deduct damage costs on their taxes, would remove the penalty for withdrawing money from a retirement account and would incentivize donations to people and regions rebuilding after wildfires.
House leadership has not yet announced whether the supplemental aid package will be added to the stopgap spending bill (H J Res 124) heading to the House Rules Committee on today and the House floor after that.
Current stopgap funding expires Dec. 22.
Both chambers of Congress cleared yesterday another short-term spending package that would keep the government funded through December 22. The old spending agreement ends at midnight Saturday.
Although the government remains funded for another two weeks, there still is no agreement on many of the unresolved issues that will need to be addressed before a final package for FY2018 can be adopted. These include questions about whether to break the budget caps, and if so, how much and for which sets of programs. Questions also remain on whether or how to address the DACA/”Dreamers” situation, which must be dealt with by March.
It appears at this point that another short-term extension will be needed beyond the 22nd.
The House is currently debating a measure to keep the federal government open for another two weeks. The current short-term package expires after tomorrow and another extension is needed by then to prevent large parts of the government from shutting down. The two-week extension, through December 22, would buy negotiators additional time to reach an agreement on a final funding package for FY2018, which started October 1.
A number of issues remain unresolved with respect to FY2018 spending, such as: the lack of an agreement on the overall amount of funding that will be available for the fiscal year; whether another short-term extension will be needed after the 22nd; the lack of an agreement on how much, or whether, to spend more on both domestic and defense discretionary programs; and, whether an increase in spending would only be for defense program.