Congressional leaders unveiled a $1.7 trillion spending package early Tuesday that features one other large round of aid to Ukraine, an almost 10% boost in defense spending and roughly $40 billon to help communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.
The bill includes about $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding.
Lawmakers are working to stuff in as many priorities as they will into what’s prone to be the last major bill of the present Congress. They’re racing to finish passage of the bill before a midnight Friday deadline or face the prospect of a partial government shutdown going into the Christmas holiday. Lawmakers leading the negotiations released the main points of the bill shortly before 2 a.m. Tuesday.
The U.S. has provided about $68 billion in previous rounds of military, economic and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine. President Joe Biden has requested greater than $37 billion more. Congress goes further with Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, saying the spending package includes about $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine.
“Finalizing the omnibus is critical, absolutely critical for supporting our friends in Ukraine,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned that if the fiscal yr 2023 spending measure fails to achieve bipartisan support this week, he would seek one other short-term patch into next yr, guaranteeing that the brand new Republican majority within the House would get to shape the package.
Leahy argued against that approach in releasing the bill saying, “the selection is evident. We are able to either do our jobs and fund the federal government, or we will abandon our responsibilities and not using a real path forward.”
Despite the warning, McConnell framed the longer-term spending bill as a victory for the GOP, at the same time as many will undoubtedly vote against it. He said Republicans were successful in increasing defense spending far beyond Biden’s request while scaling back among the increase Biden wanted for domestic spending.
“The Congress is rejecting the Biden administration’s vision and doing the precise opposite,” McConnell said.
The bill’s unveiling was delayed by haggling over language related to location of the FBI’s future headquarters. Maryland lawmakers have argued that ensuring predominately Black communities get their justifiable share of federal investments ought to be more thoroughly regarded as a part of the choice process. They’re advocating for constructing the headquarters at considered one of two sites in Maryland’s Prince George’s County.
In September, the General Services Administration issued a site selection plan based on five criteria, essentially the most heavily weighted at 35% was proximity to the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia. Advancing equity was weighted at 15%.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said at a recent forum that a Biden executive order early in his administration emphasized that the difficulty of racial equity is just not just a difficulty for anyone department, however it must be the business of the entire government.
“I might submit that the GSA and the FBI clearly haven’t gotten the message, given the low weight they’ve given to this factor,” Van Hollen said.
A Senate Democratic aide acquainted with the negotiations said Schumer worked to include language within the spending bill ensuring the GSA administrator conduct “separate and detailed consultations” with lawmakers representing the Maryland and Virginia sites to get their perspectives.
Lawmakers are nearing completion of the 2023 spending package nearly three months late. It was speculated to be finished by last Oct. 1, when the federal government’s fiscal yr began.
The last time Congress enacted all its spending bills by then was in 1996, when the Senate finished its work on Sept. 30, the very last day of the budget yr. Then-President Bill Clinton signed it that very same day.
The Senate is predicted to vote on the spending bill first where support from a minimum of 10 Republican senators will likely be needed to pass it before the measure is taken into account by the House. As has been the case with recent catchall spending bills, lawmakers voiced concerns about passing laws containing hundreds of pages on short notice.
“We still haven’t seen a single page of the Pelosi-Schumer spending bill, and so they’re expecting us to pass it by the tip of this week,” tweeted Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. “It’s insane.”