The bipartisan bill to suspend the debt and spending caps passed by the House on Wednesday contains arcane but important provisions aimed at forcing both sides to implement the deal signed by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. is
The 99-page bill would suspend the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025. According to the Congressional Budget Office, effectively freezing some of the money expected to grow next year would cut federal spending by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Limit spending growth to 1% in 2025.
But it also contained a number of side agreements that never appeared in the document but were crucial in building a bipartisan compromise so that both sides could claim they got what they wanted out of the deal. To ensure that Congress adheres to the deal, negotiators have resorted to a proven technique lawmakers have used for decades to coerce efforts to reduce the deficit: deficit reduction must be completed. It used the threat of automatic across-the-board spending cuts. their job.
Here’s how it works:
A 1% cut unless an appropriation bill is passed.
Congress is supposed to pass 12 individual spending bills each year to keep government funding. But for decades, lawmakers couldn’t agree on these measures, bundling them into one giant bill called the “omnibus” spending bill and pushing it through the threat of a shutdown.
The Debt Limitation Agreement will automatically impose a 1% cut on all spending, including military and veterans programs, which were exempt from the compromise cap unless all ten bills are passed and signed by the end of the year. become. Year. Mandatory expenditures on programs such as Medicare and Social Security are waived.
The complication is that the fiscal year that governs Congress’ spending cycle ends before the end of the calendar year, on September 30th, so the only way to avoid a government shutdown would be for Congress to fund the government from October through December. It is necessary to pass a short-term bill that provides
Both Republicans and Democrats are concerned about cuts.
The bill is one of a kind of plan put forward by Kentucky Republican Rep. He said he believed it would help him get around the Senate, which has a majority. The House will be forced to swallow a ballooning spending bill at the end of the year.
“They threaten to shut it down and demand a ransom,” Massey said of the plan in an interview in late April. “They’re going to say, ‘If we don’t pass the Senate bill, the government will shut down.'” Please take it off the table. “
Some Republican lawmakers, including defense hawks, have been outraged by the move, which they say will force the Pentagon to make irresponsible cuts. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican head of the Appropriations Committee and its defense subcommittee, said it was a “harmful” provision that left a “threat” for the Pentagon.
“It would trigger an automatic, meat-axe, indiscriminate and sweeping cut to the already inadequate defense budget and domestic discretionary non-defense funding,” Ms Collins said.
Democrats have also long resisted cutting funding for federal programs, giving them a big incentive to avoid cuts.
Without spending the bill, the main part of the Debt Agreement would disappear.
If Congress fails to pass the appropriations bill, both parties will lose the win they won in the handshake deal they were negotiating. Neither the White House nor House Republicans have released a full description of the deal, which is not in the legislative text, but some have been made clear.
The deal would allow Republicans to claim significant cuts to certain spending items, while allowing Democrats to ease the pain of budget cuts.
One of the implied but agreed upon compromises would allow misappropriators to reclaim $10 billion annually from the IRS in 2024 and 2025. That’s a key priority for Republicans who were opposed to additional enforcement funds backed by Biden and Democrats.
The other side agreement the Democrats are seeking, which would disappear if no spending bill is written, would designate $23 billion in annual non-military domestic spending as “emergency” spending, essentially decimating that amount. It is an exemption from the upper limit of the agreement.
Jim Tankerslee contributed to the report.
