- The bill passed 339-85: 132 Republicans voted yes, 83 nays and all but two Democrats voted yes.
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The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a $460 billion spending package that will fund six government agencies, relying on Democratic support to offset most Republicans who opposed it.
The bill passed 339-85: 132 Republicans voted yes, 83 nays and all but two Democrats voted yes.
The package brought together funds for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under a single vote.
Conservatives have been insisting that Congress approve funding for each government agency individually, but that seemed unsustainable under a deeply divided government.
The spending package did not include the new border security restrictions that Conservatives had wanted.
The bill passed 339-85: 132 Republicans voted yes, 83 nays and all but two Democrats voted yes.
President Johnson needed Democratic help to pass the measure
The more than 1,000-page spending plan for the government’s first six agencies, which has a funding deadline of Friday, was released Sunday, and members of the House Freedom Caucus and like-minded senators condemned the $12 billion and the 605 pages of appropriations in the bill.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote in anarchy and Biden’s tyranny.”
President Mike Johnson has touted “deep cuts” to the EPA (10%), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) (7%) and the FBI (6%), which Johnson says have “threatened our freedoms and our economy. ‘
Most of the FBI cuts come because Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, now retired, earmarked $600 million for a new FBI headquarters in Alabama last year.
Other policy provisions in the bill would provide additional funding to the FAA to oversee production of Boeing 737 Max aircraft – following several alarming safety incidents in recent months – while another would ban sales from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. United to China.
Amtrak, the long-beleaguered U.S. rail operator, would also get an additional $2.4 billion in financing.
Democrats proclaimed that the bill maintained full funding for a special food assistance program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and included advances in rental and pay assistance for infrastructure employees, such as bus drivers. air traffic.
Democrats also touted the bill rejecting “poison pills,” such as banning the promotion of critical race theory and gender-affirming care at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
But other GOP-led provisions include prohibiting veterans from being flagged by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check without a judge’s consent.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said this provision would lead him to vote against the bill entirely.
“These are mentally ill veterans, those at highest risk for suicide,” Murphy wrote in X.
The more than 1,000-page spending plan for the first six government agencies, which have a funding deadline of Friday.
“I can’t sugarcoat this: This provision, which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill people being able to purchase guns each year, will be a death sentence for many.”
Additionally, it cuts “endangered species listing activities” at the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and strengthens “monitoring and review of foreign ownership of U.S. farmland.”
The new funding details came after Congress passed a fourth short-term funding bill late last week, just one day before the government’s funding deadline.
Another funding deadline for the six remaining government agencies looms on March 22, but Congress is expected to group those bills into one or two minibus votes.