The House on Wednesday passed a $460 billion spending package that will fund six agencies of government, relying Democratic support to make up for the majority of Republicans who opposed it.
The bill passed 339-85, with 132 Republicans voting yes, 83 voting no, and all but two Democrats voting for it.
The package brought together funding for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under one vote.
Conservatives have been insisting that Congress pass funding for each agency of government individually but that looked untenable under deeply divided government.
The spending package did not include the new border security restrictions that conservatives had wanted.
The bill passed 339-85, with 132 Republicans voting yes, 83 voting no, and all but two Democrats voting for it
Speaker Johnson needed Democrat help to pass the measure
The 1,000+ page spending plan for the first six agencies of government, which have a funding deadline of Friday, was released Sunday and members of the House’s Freedom Caucus and like-minded senators decried the $12 billion and 605 pages of earmarks in the bill.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote on X that the bill ‘is littered with earmarks, fails to secure the border, & punts almost every GOP policy win – thus, will fund most of Biden’s lawlessness & tyranny.’
Speaker Mike Johnson has touted ‘deep cuts’ to the EPA (10%), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) (7%) and FBI (6%), which Johnson says has ‘threatened our freedoms and our economy.’
Most of the FBI cuts are because last year now-retired Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., earmarked $600 million for a new FBI headquarters in Alabama.
Other policy provisions in the bill would provide additional funding to the FAA to supervise the production of Boeing 737 Max aircrafts – after several alarming safety incidents in recent months – while another would prohibit U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China.
Amtrak, the long beleaguered American railway operator, would also get an additional $2.4 billion in funding.
Democrats proclaimed that the bill maintained full funding of a special food assistance program for women, infants and children (WIC) and included wins on rent assistance and pay for infrastructure employees like air traffic controllers.
Democrats also touted the bill rejecting ‘poison pills’ like prohibiting the promotion of critical race theory and gender-affirming care at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
But other GOP-led provisions include banning veterans from being flagged by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check without consent from a judge.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said this provision would lead him to vote against the bill entirely.
‘These are very very mentally ill veterans – those at the highest risk of suicide,’ Murphy wrote on X.
The 1,000+ page spending plan for the first six agencies of government, which have a funding deadline of Friday
‘I can’t sugarcoat this: this provision – which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year – will be a death sentence for many.’
In addition, it cuts the ‘endangered species listing activities’ at U.S. Fish and Wildlife and strengthens ‘tracking and review of foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land.’
The new funding details came after Congress passed a fourth short-term funding bill late last week, just one day before a government funding deadline.
Another funding deadline looms on March 22 for the six remaining government agencies, but Congress is expected to lump together those bills in one to two mini-bus votes.