Happy Leap Day! We hope you made the most of this extra day. Congress used it to pass a stopgap spending bill that eliminates the threat of a government shutdown starting Friday night. Also today, Joe Biden and Donald Trump made competing speeches at the southern border in Texas and the current president dared the former one to join him in supporting a bipartisan bill to address the immigration crisis.
Here's your February 29 fiscal update.
House Passes Stopgap Bill to Avert Friday Night Shutdown
The House on Thursday passed a short-term extension of government funding, avoiding a shutdown that would have otherwise started Saturday. The spending measure then headed to the Senate, where it is about to be approved.
The bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, is the fourth stopgap spending measure passed for this fiscal year, which started last October. It would keep one group of federal agencies operating through March 8 and another through March 22, buying more time for appropriators to finalize annual spending bills, including a batch of six set to be voted on next week.
The House vote, 320-99, easily topped the two-thirds majority required to pass the bill under suspension of the rules. Support for the bill came from 207 Democrats and 113 Republicans, while 97 Republicans and two Democrats voted against it.
“Just a day away from yet another GOP government shutdown, House Democrats have once again provided the votes to keep the government open and protect American families from the chaos and confusion of House Republicans,” Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement. “Under Democratic leadership, the House of Representatives delivered the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Under Republican leadership, barely keeping the government open is what passes for an accomplishment.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the messy appropriations process, acknowledging that it is “ugly” but arguing that he and his conference have made some innovative improvements. “We broke the omnibus fever,” he told reporters before the vote, referring to the sprawling spending packages that combine individual spending bills, which conservatives despise. “That’s how Washington has been run for years. We’re trying to turn the aircraft carrier back to real budgeting and spending reform. This was an important thing, to break it up into smaller pieces.”
Johnson also said that the text of the first set of spending bills will be posted this weekend, giving lawmakers 72 hours to review it before a vote next week ahead of the new March 8 deadline. He added that he is already looking ahead to changing next year’s budget and appropriations process.
“The remaining six appropriations bills will be finalized ahead of the March 22 deadline,” Johnson said, “and then what I’m very excited about and anxious to do is turn the page on FY24 and get immediately into FY25 and that process, to change the way that it’s done — to back it up on the calendar, to do everything we can to get that job done by end of summer so that we’re not coming up at the end of September, end of the fiscal year and having to talk about CRs and omnibuses.”
What it all means: “At the end of the process, now expected to extend into late March, Congress is set to approve more than $1.6 trillion in spending for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 — roughly in line with the previous fiscal year,” writes Kevin Freking of the Associated Press. “That’s the amount that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the White House last year before eight disgruntled Republican lawmakers joined with Democrats a few months later and voted to oust him from the position.”
Hard-right Republicans have pushed for steeper spending cuts or policy victories, but Johnson lately has acknowledged his limited leverage to make conservative demands. “He is making the inevitable decision that was clear in September,” Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry said, per The New York Times. “It was clear in November, December — it’s been clear for months that this is the outcome.”
Still, Republican leaders tried to highlight their achievements.
“When you take away Defense and Veterans Affairs, the rest of the agencies are going to be seeing spending cuts in many cases,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. “There are also some policy changes that we pushed through the House that will be in the final product. Of course, some of those are still being negotiated.”
What’s next: There are still some hurdles to clear and shutdown threats to defuse before the appropriations process is complete, and the most contentious of the annual spending bills have yet to be finalized. That may be the true test for Johnson and congressional appropriators.
But after Thursday’s vote on the stopgap spending bill, the House went on to approve a short-term extension of FAA authorization, its final vote of the week after returning yesterday from a 12-day-long Presidents’ Day recess. As Joan McCarter notes at the liberal site Daily Kos, between starting their legislative week Wednesday afternoon and ending it Thursday, House lawmakers put in a “grueling 16-hour work week to fund government for one whole week.”
Number of the Day: 2.4%
The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, a measure of inflation tracked closely by the Federal Reserve, rose by 2.4% on an annual basis in January, according to government data released Thursday. The measure has been falling steadily for months, with the annual reading for last month dropping from 2.6% in December, 2.7% in November and 3.0% in October.
Some inflation indicators in the report, however, pointed the other way. The month-over-month increase in the index came in at 0.3%, a jump from the 0.1% reading in December, while the core PCE price index, which ignores volatile food and fuel prices, rose 0.4% from December to January, up from the 0.1% reading a month earlier. On an annual basis, core PCE was 2.8%, down slightly from the 2.9% reading in December.
Overall, the data is still consistent with a long-term decline in inflation, even if the decline is uneven and, in some instances, moves backward. Speaking at a conference Thursday, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic sounded unconcerned about the one-month blip in the report. “The last few inflation readings — one came out today — have shown that this is not going to be an inexorable march that gets you immediately to 2%, but that rather there are going to be some bumps along the way,” he said.
Support for Ukraine Aid Breaks Down Along Partisan Lines: Poll
A supplemental spending bill that would provide $60 billion in aid to Ukraine has passed the Senate but is hung up in the House, where Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to hold a vote on it. Johnson maintains that support for allies must wait until lawmakers come up with a solution to the problems at the border with Mexico, despite growing pressure to act quickly to help Ukraine. “We must take care of America’s needs first,” Johnson insists.
According to a new AP-NORC poll, Johnson’s stance largely reflects the views of Republicans nationwide. In a poll of 1,102 adults taken between February 22 and 26, most Republicans (55%) said the U.S. is spending too much to help Ukraine in its war against Russia, while just 14% said it was spending too little. By contrast, a plurality of Democrats (44%) said the U.S. is spending too little, with just 17% saying it was spending too much.
The division on funding extends to the war itself. “Foreign policy on the Russia-Ukraine war has become a partisan dividing line,” the pollsters say. “Most Democrats see it as a priority for the U.S. government to prevent Russia from gaining more territory in Ukraine and to help Ukraine regain territory that is currently occupied by Russia. Less than half of Republicans agree.”
Fiscal News Roundup
- House Passes Short-Term Extension to Avert a Government Shutdown – Washington Post
- House Passes Two-Tiered Stopgap Bill, the Last One, in Theory – Roll Call
- How Each House Member Voted on Delaying a Government Shutdown – Washington Post
- Head of Freedom Caucus Bashes Funding Deal, Vows Shutdown Fight – The Hill
- Biden and Trump Face Off at Southern Border in Dueling Visits – Politico
- 5 Takeaways From Dueling Trump, Biden Southern Border Trip – The Hill
- Highlights From Biden and Trump's Rival Border Speeches – CNN
- McConnell Exit Surprises GOP: ‘It’s Trump’s Party Now’ – The Hill
- Republicans Used to Back Ukraine. Then Came Middle Fingers in Alabama – Washington Post
- Higher Interest Rates Produce a Surprise for Some: Taxes on Savings – Washington Post
- Lawmakers Push Changes to CBO Scoring for Preventive Health – Roll Call
- The Fed Governor Who Proved Larry Summers Wrong – Wall Street Journal
- Biden Is Too Old but Trump Is Dangerous, Swing-State Poll Shows – Bloomberg
Views and Analysis
- It’s Late, but Speaker Johnson Still Has Time to Do What’s Right on Ukraine – Washington Post Editorial Board
- Put Up or Shut Up, Mr. Speaker – Jim Geraghty, Washington Post
- House Suffers Grueling 16-Hour Work Week to Fund Government for One Whole Week – Joan McCarter, Daily Kos
- The U.S. Economy Is Surpassing Expectations. Immigration Is One Reason – Lydia DePillis, New York Times
- Inflation: The Sound of Silence – Paul Krugman, New York Times
- My Emergency Patients Wait Hours — or Days — for a Hospital Bed – Hashem Zikry, Washington Post
- How Mitch McConnell Can End on a High Note – Washington Post Editorial Board
- McConnell Built Today’s Supreme Court. Will He Come to Regret It? – Peter S. Canellos, Politico
- How Mitch McConnell Won the Court and Lost His Party – Benjy Sarlin, Semafor
- Mitch McConnell’s Great Senate Legacy – Wall Street Editorial Board
- Mitch McConnell Bent the Arc of American History to the Right – Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post
- What I Learned When I Read 887 Pages of Plans for Trump’s Second Term – Carlos Lozada, New York Times