Funding for agencies covered by the Agriculture, Energy, HUD, Transportation and VA appropriations bills lapses January 19, while all other departments and agencies currently are funded only until February 2—in both cases, largely at fiscal 2023 levels. Image: Dennis Diatel/Shutterstock.com
Congress is looking to wrap up its work for the year this week or next, with agency budgets for the fiscal year that will be nearly three months old by then still uncertain, and another shutdown deadline within view.
After the upcoming holiday recess, Congress plans to return January 9, leaving less than two weeks before expiration of one of two temporary spending bills that were enacted in November just ahead of the end of a prior stopgap measure. Funding for agencies covered by the Agriculture, Energy, HUD, Transportation and VA appropriations bills lapses January 19, while all other departments and agencies currently are funded only until February 2—in both cases, largely at fiscal 2023 levels.
When the current extensions were enacted there had been an expectation that the House and Senate would use the last weeks of the year to pass regular appropriations bills, readying them for potential final action ahead of those two deadlines. However, no floor votes have been held on any of the 12 regular spending bills since then as Congress has been focused on other issues. Those issues likely will consume most of the working time remaining in the year.
Some movement has occurred over the last month, however, as some of the farthest-right Republicans in the House have eased off their demands for deep spending cuts overall, indicating a willingness to stick to spending levels set in the law enacted in the spring suspending the federal debt ceiling until 2025.
However, that has not been translated into specific language for spending bills, with House GOP leaders raising the prospects of Congress enacting either additional stopgap measures or potentially simply extending funding through the remainder of the fiscal year through September. Democrats controlling the Senate meanwhile have said that would be unacceptable to them, given the changing agency needs since 2023 funding was finalized.
The lack of action on one of the appropriations bills, the general government measure, has essentially guaranteed that a 5.2 percent average federal employee pay raise for January will be paid by default. President Biden has said he would set that figure, which he has backed all year, if a different one is not enacted into law by the end of the year.
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