A big congratulations to our Appropriations Team members: Leslie Belcher, Elizabeth Burks, and Rowan Bost; who were included among The Hill's Top Lobbyists for 2024!
Reconciliation Prep: This week, incoming-Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) released his reconciliation plan for next year – a two-pronged approach that would start with moving an energy, border, and defense package within the first 30 days and saving tax for a second package later in the year. This was quickly met with resistance in the House and Senate. Incoming-Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) had concerns with moving any discretionary defense spending to the mandatory side of the federal budget ledger, and House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) expressed concern about not moving on tax policy in the first reconciliation package.
All I Want for Christmas is a Continuing Resolution: Progress on a solution for FY25 funding was slow-moving this week. Although Congress will pass a continuing resolution (CR) before December 20, details on the length, amount, and what additional legislation is added to the CR are still under discussion.
Rumors are swirling that the stopgap's end date could be sometime in March, although we have also heard mention of the end of February. Under last year's debt limit deal, across-the-board cuts will start in late April if a funding deal cannot be reached, causing many members to advocate for an earlier end date. Sen. Collins stated she is still holding out hope that the CR will not go into March. She also argued that indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts would disproportionately affect the Department of Defense.
Disaster Supplemental: Lawmakers are still reviewing President Biden's supplemental disaster aid request, with appropriators from both parties engaged in negotiating topline numbers for the package. Although there is support within both parties for the supplemental, Republicans are predicting that the total topline number could be lower than the White House has requested. The House Freedom Caucus issued a statement calling for the package to be fully offset. We expect it will be attached to the next CR and pass with bipartisan support.
Left on the Vine: One supplemental that reportedly won't make it in the stopgap legislation: additional funding for Ukraine. Last week, the Biden administration dropped another $24 billion supplemental funding request for Ukraine aid, but Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has made it clear that all pending actions and funding for Ukraine will be handled next year.
DOGE Gets Real: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy made the rounds on Capitol Hill this week, and we learned a bit more about the kinds of spending cuts the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be pushing. DOGE is not planning to propose sweeping cuts to Social Security or Medicare. They are, however, looking at areas of waste and fraud in the mandatory powerhouses, which account for 72 percent of total federal spending.
Outside of plans to create a new House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, lawmakers are becoming increasingly focused on ways they can implement DOGE's recommendations. DOGE caucuses have emerged in both chambers to coordinate on the Department's recommendations, and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has unveiled a package of "DOGE Acts" that would implement a number of DOGE recommendations, such as establishing a commission to relocate federal agencies out of DC, instigating a year-long pause on federal hiring, and establishing a pilot program to compensate civilian employees in relation to merit. Further, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said this week that Congress should be using the reconciliation process to pass DOGE's recommendations.
We will give you a primer next week on the reconciliation process. Lawmakers will add major priorities to any reconciliation bill since they only need a simple majority in the Senate. However, all language must pass the Senate Parliamentarian's interpretation of the complicated "Byrd Rule" (a process called the "Byrd Bath"), which removes all provisions that do not have a budgetary impact from the bill. More on this later.
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