House Approves 2-Year Budget Deal, Senate Vote This Week

ANCOR is sharing this article by Politico because it is important for our members to follow the federal budget process because it can strengthen or weaken future policymaking opportunities in our arena and illustrates how Congress is functioning. As a note to our members, the deal agrees to overall spending for the next two years but how that total will be divided among federal programs remains to be decided. After the August recess, we expect to see the limited time of Congress in September dedicated in large part to finalizing a budget based on the parameters of the budget deal.

As written in Politico:

“Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who hammered out the deal during weeks of talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — flexed her political muscle and rounded up 219 Democratic votes for the measure, an impressive display that more than offset the lack of Republican support.

GOP leaders — despite a boost from President Donald Trump — scrambled to round up Republican backing in the hours before the House passed the two-year, $2.7 trillion agreement on a 284-149 vote. The deal is expected to clear the Senate next week.

[…]

While the budget pact holds the promise of two years of peace from the fiscal battles the country has endured since Trump first entered the ring with congressional Democrats in 2017, it does not actually fund the government or technically thwart a shutdown. It paves the way, however, for a brief return to funding the government the old-fashioned way, with spending bills flowing from this umbrella agreement based on the budget totals for both the military and non-defense programs.

[…]

If the two parties had not struck a deal, $126 billion in sequestration cuts would set in come January, ravaging every discretionary account in the federal government.”