House Approves Spending Bill Without Debt Ceiling Provision
34 Republicans voted no.
The House passed a spending bill, similar to the one voted on last night.
President-elect Donald Trump wanted the bill to include raising the debt ceiling.
This latest bill did not include it.
It passed 366 to 34. Only Republicans voted no. Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH) voted present.
This continuing resolution (CR) will expire on May 14, 2025, when I’m out of town. *evil laugh*
U.S. House PASSES government funding bill, 366-34.
Goes now to the U.S. Senate. pic.twitter.com/ZPCtxBbfml
— CSPAN (@cspan) December 20, 2024
Now it goes to the Senate.
The White House signaled it would sign the bill if it gets through the Senate.
“While it does not include everything we sought, it includes disaster relief that the President requested for the communities recovering from the storm, eliminates the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires, and would ensure that the government can continue to operate at full capacity,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in an emailed statement.
She added: “President Biden supports moving this legislation forward and ensuring that the vital services the government provides for hardworking Americans – from issuing Social Security checks to processing benefits for veterans — can continue as well as to grant assistance for communities that were impacted by devastating hurricanes.”
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Comments
Is this one shorter than the short one?
Yep. It didn’t include raising the debt limit. However it still got the no votes b/c it included about $330 billion in new spending. This AM the plan was to split it into 3 parts:
1. Clean CR
2. AG relief bill
3. Disaster relief bill
Instead of offering 3 stand alone bills the establishment demanded a single bill and had 30+ votes against it. The establishment is gonna need to figure out how to internalize and accept that the BS business as usual DC shenanigans are not acceptable to a significant portion of the GoP conference. If the DC establishment continues to ignore and belittle the populists instead of earning their votes they will come up against the.same problems in the
next Congress. We don’t have a Parliamentary system and these populist members can vote in accordance with their principles. Broadly that means finding cuts to offset any new spending/tax cuts, shrinking size/scope of govt and serious efforts towards a balanced budget…starting now, not off in the distance on some ten year horizon where the cuts never come but right damn now.
Misstated th $. Not $330 billion in new spending. That was one of the previous bills that didn’t pass. The final CR bill looks like it also had $100 billion for disaster relief and $10 billion for AG. So a total of $330 billion in new spending.
No, this one is a tall short one. It doesn’t have a ceiling.
Booooo!
Booooo!
Sooner or later we’ll find out how much garbage they managed to bury into this one. I’m sure it’s a non-zero quantity
The Dem objective is to have the debt ceiling debate at the beginning of Trump’s term so they can screech about how his spending is causing what their spending actually caused.
Trump could always offer a balanced budget to avoid that specific criticism. Though cutting $1.75 Trillion ish in annual federal spending above the annual federal revenue of $4.4 Trillion ish would cause lots of whining from all across the political spectrum. Everyone thinks ‘their’ pet program(s) is needed and it’s the other folks pet program(s) that should be cut.
No matter what President Trump does, there will be rage and screeching over it. So why not do the right thing?
No argument from on cutting the roughly $1.75 Trillion in spending above revenue to get to a balanced budget. The issue will be what is funded and what is cut. Here’s some basic back of the envelope math to show the scale.
Interest on debt is $1.2 Trillion
VA is $250 billion
Federal pensions $200 billion
IMO those are things we must pay b/c folks earned/are owed them. Add those and you’re at $1.65 Trillion spent out of $4.4 Trillion in revenue. Add DoD spending at $950 billion. Leaving $1.8 Trillion for everything else. Federal spending on Medicaid alone is about $600 billion.
We now have $1.2 Trillion left to spend on everything else if we want a balanced budget. Think about how many other things the Fed Gov’t spends $ on and we see how difficult it will be to get a balanced budget. FWIW I 100% agree it is worth the effort to get to a balanced budget but many, even many MAGA folks, will whine when the remaining programs get eliminated and go unfunded.
For the benefits programs (let’s say, like the VA), how much direct cash benefit is going to the end user, and how much overhead is being paid?
My bet is that you can do some deep personnel cuts and still pay out benefits.
We need to see government spending breakdowns into salaries – force every government employee to take a 25% paycut, and see how much that helps. Or fire 75% of them.
If life was fair, those government pensions would reflect SSI requirements, in that, penalties for early payouts, limits to outside income, clawbacks for exceeding income ceilings and defined benefit v. defined contribution based structure.
When SSI only pays 100% at full retirement age and penalizes any early withdrawals, government retirees receive defined benefit and can retire after 20 some years and begin collecting, there must be some mechanism to equate those different programs. Further, the constant threat that SSI is becoming insolvent whereas government pensions are untouchable is one more wound that needs to be addressed.
jhkrischel,
You’d need to do a deeper dive on ratio of directions payments to Veterans v overhead and salary at VA. The # I showed also includes running the VA hospitals so don’t forget that it isn’t just guys in an office sending out payments. It also includes the education benefits. IOW it’s the whole enchilada of Veterans benefits.
Culling dead wood from govt payroll is a great idea. Probably could cut 1/3 to 40% across the board. Frankly the entire TSA should be on the payroll of the local airports, IMO.
mrtomsr,
I don’t really understand what you arguing for. Are you saying we need to deduct the amount of SSI payment from govt employees pensions? That doesn’t seem fair. They paid into SSI just like everyone else other than those retired decades ago and they are covered by SSI windfall provision which reduces or eliminates their SSI benefits.
It will be IMPOSSIBLE to balance the budget without doing an immense amount of waste and fraud removal from all departments. It is a fact that all departments, including DoD, pensions, SS and Medicare could likely run on 50% of their current spending if it were all spent on mission instead of waste.
The Deep State has been enriching itself and its cronies for a very long time, and it has poisoned this Republic.
It will either be reformed or it will be burned down with the rest of the structure.
Dolce,
I am all for hacking and slashing at the size and scope of the Federal gov’t with an ax not a scalpel but a 50% cut in DoD is a bit much. Realistically DoD could be pared back to $700 billion from the current $950 billion so long as we understand we are also cutting capacity as well and the public + politicians stop sending US Military as the ‘world police’.
As for SSA benefit cuts of 50%….bruh…. the AARP and the boomers will tar and feather you if you’re lucky enough to survive the mob dragging you out of your home before they burn it. At most we can raise retirement age to 70 for gen X, to 71 for Millennials and 72 for gen Z. Then end both the spousal benefit and early retirement for all including the boomers. If they are too broken to work till full retirement age they qualify for SS disability. Then increase the total years to 45 as divisor with 20 minimum to qualify. Those will fix the coming 25% shortfall.
Federal employee pensions were earned. Folks served their time and did the job well enough not to be fired and to qualify for a pension. Admittedly that wasn’t a high bar for many but retroactively cutting their pension by 50% is just wrong IMO. Change going forward for those who haven’t yet qualified to retire? Sure no problem.
“Frankly the entire TSA should be on the payroll of the local airports, IMO.”
In other words, exactly where it was prior to 9/11. Since this arrangement failed spectacularly, the fedguv created TSA, and then staffed it with exactly the same incompetent individuals, literally issuing them new uniforms, thereby guaranteeing its ballyhooed success,
TSA is to actual transportation safety as Obamacare is to actual health care. All the fedguv did to either was to add bureaucracy and remove customer service.
Henry,
Indeed. The TSA is a largely ineffective boondoggle. End direct Federal role otjer than ‘Air Marshall’, security tests and oversight. Transfer the equipment to the local airport authorities and require them to pay the personnel costs.
Much of what the Federal Gov’t currently is doing is better done by and should be funded by the States/Local Gov’t. That’s one important point to keep in mind when we end Federal programs; some will disappear entirely but many will be performed by States and the funds will come from increased State and local taxation. In the case of ‘TSA’ the costs should be borne by air travellers from increased ticket charges.
The problem with that theory, in addition to finding the massive spending reductions you mentioned, is that Trump would like to offer a significant number of tax cuts to boost the economy (instead of the Democrat prescription of giving grifts to their supporters) but by Congressional rules those tax cuts are considered ‘spending’ and have to be accounted for in any budget proposals.
If the ‘Plan B’ (as some have called it) aka the CR with extended suspension of the debt ceiling had passed then Trump and the Congressional GOP could have moved directly into implementing his tax cuts and other economic proposals. This is why 100% of the Democrats voted for this bill that doesn’t extend the debt ceiling. The combination of butthurt NeverTrump GOPers and Freedom Caucus idiots who can’t figure out how to run a Congressional party spiked what would have been a really excellent deal for something that will allow the Democrats to tie Congress in knots right when Trump and the GOP need to be seen as moving to implement the agenda that got them voted into office.
1.Budget scoring rules ain’t set in stone. The majority can amend them. Big political fight.
2. He could offer spending reductions to offset the proposed tax cuts to follow current budget scoring rules.
The only way Trump could have gotten the debt cap lifted is with d/prog support paid for (bribed) by all the Cray Cray in the first bill. If he wanted the support of the GoP populists who voted NO he and the Speaker should be working with them to gain their support for a bill the populists can live with then see who votes up/down.
The whole debt limit thing is a bunch of BS anyhow. All they ever do is argue over it for a few weeks, pass a couple of continuing resolutions and then have some crappy spending Bill where they blow even more money we don’t have so that they can finally raise it anyhow. Why even have a limit if you can just raise it whenever you want?
Because the constitution probably requires one.
The treasury is not allowed to borrow money. At all, for any purpose. Only Congress can. But it makes no sense to actually run things that way, so Congress authorizes the treasury to borrow in its name, up to a certain limit. An unlimited authorization would probably violate the Nondelegation doctrine.
Time for plan B. Trump says we are out of money and can’t borrow, so we have to lay off 30% of the work force.
Yeah, that might have a chance if the bulk if the spending went to bureaucrat salaries, but it doesn’t.
Think of it this way – the bulk of bureaucrat salaries funds democrat political campaigns.
Slim the bureaucracy, slim the Ds.
I will simply note that because of X, Democrats were taking as much of a hit as Republicans. The purple-haired harridan from Connecticut isn’t going to be happy being featured in the next election cycle.
Onto the next battle…and I am sure there will be many more.
Rosa DeL looks like strange alien creature captured by NASA that escaped from Area 51.
The debt limit was bogus anyway and can’t do any good. The debt is given by spending and revenue, all under control of Congress.
It was just a means of leveraging posturing.
The limit is real. Only congress can borrow money. The treasury can only borrow in Congress’s name, so once it’s up to the limit Congress set it can’t borrow any more.
Any “pared down” federal government spending bill STILL spends too damned much money! A real “pared down” bill would spend enough for a very, very bare bones—say essential services only—staff to stay on until the new administration takes over and started weeding out the dead wood and the loafers. That should leave about 100,000 federal employees left, sans the military.
All the Democrats voted for it, and the number 34 indicates to me that it was the MAGA Republicans voted against it. That already tells me the snookering was achieved, and I won’t like the result.
Chalk it as a win in the sense the Omnibus abomination was ditched.
A half win. Johnson still hasn’t figured out that he needs to act like a Republican once in a while.
He is,….a spineless whimp
He may be a “Republican” but the Republicans aren’t our friends and are not interested in the best interests of the country.
So the result of those 38 idiots voting no to a much lower amount of spending on very strictly limited things that every democrat wanted to crush (in other words a VASTLY superior bill) is a bill that spends more than that and we do not know what horrible poison pills is in it because those 38 morons made Democrat votes required to pass it….;..
Could we get more congressmen who actually care about results and fewer idiots in Washington strictly for themselves?
I hope the funding of Democrat censorship efforts did not make it into this bill. I have no idea if it did however because 38 idiots made the bill need Democrat votes to pass.
The deal of “we will get you a much worst bill, you will not have a chance to see what poison pill bought Democrat votes but we felt good about ourselves and virtue signaled” was a horrible deal for our side.
Or they could, you know, pass the 13 or so bills that represent an annual budget like they’re supposed to according to the constitution. But I guess that’s kind of out of the question
The option was the last bill without any Democrat poison pills costing orders of magnitude less to keep the government funded or this one with three times the spending and unknown Democrat poison pills.
I have had enough of losing to virtue signaling. Trump actually had a much better option ready for us and I thought had done a fantastic job.
Trump’s bill was the last (vastly superior) version, this was a compromise Trump was forced to make by a bunch of virtue signaling twits who knew this type of outcome was going to be the result.
The spending increase of this vs the last bill is not insignificant, and it is something that all 38 rogue congressmen knew would happen because they knew if Democrat votes had to happen to pass it the result would be orders of magnitude higher spending (and three times is orders of magnitude).
The moral of the story is listen to Trump for less spending or listen to virtue signalers for higher spending.
I care about results. Obedience to Trump would have meant a third of the spending, rebelling against Trump meant requirement to compromise resulting in three times the spending.
Even if my pessimism is wrong and there is no poison pill that is three times the spending. I have no idea what way that isn’t a defeat.
If you are a congressmen results matter.
This is why we always lose. The democrats and their loyal lapdogs in the media suggested that if congress didn’t vote for democrat graft, that would mean that Elon Musk was running the country because he dared publish what was actually in the bill and questioned why anyone would vote for it. Republicans, who have never had a lesson they didn’t fail, tucked their tails and gave the democrats the majority of what they wanted… you know, to prove Elon Musk isn’t President.
That’s a level of mental retardation that just can’t be fixed.
How about we go back to the spending level from before Covid and start over? It was not rocket science to realize that once Democrats jammed in “emergency spending” and Republicans went along with it that new spending amount would become the base and never go away.
Better yet go back to the last Clinton budget, adjust for inflation and there’s the top line number. Then start cutting out programs, agency and dept.
What worries me more is why Biden and Harris rushed back to DC. I find it hard to believe it was for any pending “shut down” (that isn’t really a shutdown) or some CR.
Posturing for political reasons. Those two were trying to act like they were of some importance to the outcome! If only Biden would exercise his veto on this one. Not likely.