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Post by Webster on Feb 27, 2024 17:22:36 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Feb 28, 2024 21:55:30 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Congressional leaders reach deal to avert government shutdownCongressional leaders said they have reached a deal to advance appropriations bills in March for fiscal year 2024, averting a government shutdown for now. A joint statement from Democratic and Republican leaders including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House speaker Mike Johnson reads: We are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government.
Negotiators have come to an agreement on six bills: Agriculture-FDA, Commerce-Justice and Science, Energy and Water Development, Interior, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD. After preparing final text, this package of six full year Appropriations bills will be voted on and enacted prior to March 8. These bills will adhere to the Fiscal Responsibility Act discretionary spending limits and January’s topline spending agreement.
The remaining six Appropriations bills – Defense, Financial Services and General Government, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS, Legislative Branch, and State and Foreign Operations – will be finalized, voted on, and enacted prior to March 22.A shutdown would have forced many federal employees to go without pay until Congress passed another funding bill, and while that disruption has been avoided for now, the threat will arise again in the coming weeks.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:26:07 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Mike Johnson’s predecessor as House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was booted from his post by rightwing Republicans when he worked with Democrats to prevent a government shutdown. Johnson is trying to avoid that fate, and his hesitancy to put a bill sending military aid to Ukraine to a vote is seen as part of that. But as the Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports, the Democrats who were fine with letting McCarthy perish now indicate they may be willing to save Johnson, should he allow the vote to go through: The Democratic leadership in Congress has suggested it would protect the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, if he bucks his far-right colleagues and brings a stalled $60bn Ukraine military aid package to a vote, as a new poll shows public support for Ukraine is now fractured down party-political lines.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, floated the offer in an interview with the New York Times, saying “a reasonable number” of Democrats would vote to save the Republican speaker if the Ukraine vote resulted in a Republican mutiny.
Far-right members of Congress including Marjorie Taylor Greene have said they would seek to depose Johnson if he brings the foreign aid bill forward, threatening to send Republicans toward yet another protracted leadership crisis like the one that paralyzed the House under former speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Jeffries said that if Johnson were “to do the right thing”, there would be a “reasonable number of people” on the Democratic side “who will take the position that he should not fall as a result”. But Jeffries said he had not discussed the matter with Johnson, who has said Congress “must take care of America’s needs first”.
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Post by Webster on Feb 29, 2024 17:34:28 GMT -5
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Post by Webster on Mar 1, 2024 19:24:21 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Biden signs stopgap bill to avert government shutdownJoe Biden has signed into law a short-term stopgap spending bill to avert a partial government shutdown, the White House has said. The bill was approved by the Senate on Thursday following a House vote that narrowly averted a shutdown that was due to occur this weekend. The temporary extension funds the departments of agriculture, transportation, interior and others through 8 March. It funds the Pentagon, homeland security, health and state through 22 March.
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Post by Webster on Mar 18, 2024 17:46:05 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Congress scrambles to avert shutdown as deadline loomsCongress is once again running up on yet another critical government funding deadline, as lawmakers scramble to avert a shutdown by midnight on Friday, when funding runs out for six big annual spending bills that cover some 70% of all federal discretionary spending. As recently as Friday, negotiators were nearing an agreement to complete a spending bill but disagreements over funding for the department of homeland security have since derailed the talks.
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Post by Webster on Mar 18, 2024 18:07:51 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Deal to avert shutdown held up over border security deadlockA dispute over border security funding threatens to force a shutdown of swaths of the federal government, with lawmakers racing to reach a deal on long-term spending legislation to meet a Friday deadline. Disagreements over immigration at the US-Mexico border have stymied the talks, the Washington Post reported, while part of the dispute is that Democrats are pressing for more funding for pay equity for the transportation security administration (TSA) while Republicans want more funding for US immigration and customs enforcement’s (ICE) detention and enforcement efforts, the Hill reported. GOP negotiators were prepared to offer the homeland security department roughly the same level of funding for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, but due to inflation, that would represent a significant funding cut in real terms. On Sunday, the White House accused Republicans of “playing politics” with appropriations for the homeland security department, telling Politico that the GOP want to “sow chaos on the border ahead of November” after rejecting an offer from Democrats for an extra $1.56bn in funding for border security.
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Post by Webster on Mar 21, 2024 13:49:46 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Congress unveils $1.2tn spending package ahead of shutdownCongressional leaders on Tuesday formally announced a $1.2tn spending deal to fund the federal government, giving lawmakers less than two days to avert a partial government shutdown. The package is the most substantial bipartisan legislation that Mike Johnson has negotiated since he ascended to the speaker’s chair, and comes after disputes among House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House over border security funding. The Republican-controlled House will vote on the sprawling package on Friday, leaving the Democratic-majority Senate only hours to pass the package of six bills that covers about two-thirds of the $1.66tn in discretionary government spending for the fiscal year that began on 1 October.
Mike Johnson, the House speaker, touted what he called a series of wins for Republicans in the spending package, from higher spending for defense and border security to a cutoff of US funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). In a statement released along with the text of the legislation, Johnson said: This FY24 appropriations legislation is a serious commitment to strengthening our national defense by moving the Pentagon toward a focus on its core mission.In a closed-door meeting with GOP lawmakers on Wednesday, Johnson noted the bill funds 8,000 additional detention beds for noncitizens awaiting their immigration proceedings or removal from the country. -- “The homeland [security] piece was the most difficult to negotiate because the two parties have a wide chasm between them,” he said at the GOP leadership’s weekly press conference yesterday.He added: I think the final product is something that we were able to achieve a lot of key provisions in, and wins, and it moved in a direction that we want even with our tiny, historically small majority.
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Post by Webster on Mar 21, 2024 16:56:29 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Spending deal bars US funds to UN agency for PalestiniansCongressional leaders have rolled out a $1.2tn spending package that would fund large swaths of the government for the rest of the fiscal year 2024, the product of a deal between President Joe Biden, House speaker Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. The package combines funding for half of the 12 annual government spending bills, including for the departments of defense, labor, homeland security, health and human services, education and state; the internal revenue service; and general government foreign operations. The package includes over $490m in funding to hire 22,000 border patrol agents, which Republicans are touting as the “highest level ever funded”, the Hill reports. -- Negotiators have been highlighting funding boosts for border security technology, increases to Border Patrol overtime pay that had been green-lit in the annual defense authorization bill last year, and funding for 41,500 detention beds. Democrats have also seized on a lack of border wall funding after a partisan fight over DHS spending.The package includes more than $10.5bn for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is $1.2bn above fiscal year 2023 levels. Republicans secured a 12-month prohibition on federal funding for the UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. The package also includes $6bn for the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, as well as $1.65bn for the Global Fund.
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Post by Webster on Mar 21, 2024 17:54:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) The White House said it “strongly supports” passage of the bill to fund the remaining federal departments that have not yet had spending authorized for the 2024 fiscal year, calling it “a compromise between Republicans and Democrats” that would invest “in key priorities for the American people”. But in their statement, the Office of Management and Budget has one quibble. It notes that the Biden administration “fought for and secured additional resources in H.R. 2882 so that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can maintain its current capacity to manage the border”, which is seeing a surge in migrant arrivals, but that funding won’t be sufficient: However, DHS funding levels are still inadequate and the Administration reiterates its call to the Congress to take up and pass the bipartisan border security agreement, which would provide DHS with policy changes and resources it needs to better secure our border and protect the homeland.The bipartisan border security agreement they are referring to appears to be dead, killed by Republicans who felt it did not go far enough – even though their lawmakers were involved in negotiating it.
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Post by Webster on Mar 22, 2024 14:05:11 GMT -5
(The Guardian) As Congress scrambles to avert shutdown, rightwing lawmakers urge Republicans to reject funding billShortly before 11am, we expect the House to vote on a funding bill to prevent a partial government shutdown that would begin at midnight. The legislation – which authorizes spending by government departments that has not already been approved by an earlier law – needs the support of two-thirds of Congress’s lower chamber to pass. As they have done with previous spending bills, rightwing Republicans are urging their colleagues to vote against the measure, and have spent this morning detailing their objections, both face to face at the Capitol, and on X. Here’s Georgia’s Andrew Clyde: Perhaps more worrying is the announcement from Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt that he will not vote for the bill. Aderholt is relatively high ranking as the chair of a House appropriations subcommittee, and in a statement said: “I have multiple concerns, among them are the many new social services that this bill would create for the millions of illegal immigrants streaming across our border. Additionally, it would fund facilities providing routine abortion services, including late-term abortions.”
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Post by Webster on Mar 22, 2024 14:07:13 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Rightwing Republicans are currently assailing the spending bill on the House floor, with Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene calling it “a Chuck Schumer Democrat-controlled bill coming from the House majority that is supposed to be controlled by Republicans.” “It is the will of our voters and it is the will of Republicans across the country that this bill should not be brought to the floor, that this bill will absolutely destroy our majority and will tell every single one of our voters that this majority is a failure,” she continued. “This is the bill that the White House cannot wait to sign into law.” Republican speaker Mike Johnson supports the bill, and is seeking to pass it under suspension of the House rules – which requires a two-thirds majority vote for passage. We’ll see if he gets there.
Voting has now begun in the House on the government funding bill. It will keep crucial federal departments where spending has not yet been authorized, such as the state and defense departments, running through the end of September. It needs a two-thirds majority of votes to pass, and then must be approved by the Senate. Joe Biden says he will sign it.
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Post by Webster on Mar 22, 2024 14:23:39 GMT -5
(The Guardian) House passes funding bill to prevent partial government shutdownThe House has approved a $1.2tn government funding bill that will prevent a partial shutdown, with 286 votes in favor against 134 opposed. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill later today, and Joe Biden has said he will sign it.
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Post by Webster on Mar 22, 2024 14:36:22 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Johnson calls funding bill 'best achievable outcome'Republican House speaker Mike Johnson has issued an upbeat statement on the government funding measure, saying it enacted some conservative policies and was the best-case scenario for the GOP, considering Democrats control the Senate and White House. “House Republicans achieved conservative policy wins, rejected extreme Democrat proposals, and imposed substantial cuts while significantly strengthening national defense. The process was also an important step in breaking the omnibus muscle memory and represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government,” the speaker said. He did not comment on the motion to remove him as the House’s leader, which was filed by rightwing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene.
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