House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., speaks at a ceremony to award a Congressional Gold Medal to baseball player Larry Doby at the Capitol, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023, in Washington.(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Published January 8, 2024
House conservatives rested over the holidays, traveled to the border last week to issue some policy demands and say they’re ready to rumble.
Congress returns to Washington Tuesday, flirting with cutting off funding for big chunks of the government in 11 days unless demands are met for immigration and border restrictions. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a deal Sunday on a total amount the government will spend in the new year, breaking one logjam but not necessarily erasing the threat of a shutdown after Jan. 19.
President Biden commended the glimmer of progress, with caveats. “Congressional Republicans must do their job, stop threatening to shut down the government, and fulfill their basic responsibility to fund critical domestic and national security priorities, including my supplemental [funding] request. It’s time for them to act,” he said in a statement.
Welcome to 2024, so much like 2023.
“The president has the existent authority under federal law to stem the flow [of migration],” Johnson told CBS’s “Face the Nation” during an interview broadcast Sunday. “If you instituted, reinstituted the [Trump era] Remain in Mexico policy, for example, it was estimated … that would stem the flow by maybe 70 percent. I mean, that’s a simple measure, an executive order that the White House could undertake. On his first day in office, President Biden came in and issued executive orders that began this chaos.”
Biden ended the Trump policy that required migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court dates. The Supreme Court said he had that authority. House conservatives adopted a measure last year that would reinstate Trump’s policy.
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SOURCE: www.thehill.com
RELATED: Speaker Mike Johnson, White House Strike Spending Framework Deal
Published January 7, 2024
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and congressional leaders have struck a spending framework deal that may avert a government shutdown; however, it may frustrate conservatives who want more drastic cuts.
The bipartisan framework would set defense funding at $866 billion and non-defense spending at $704 billion for the current fiscal year, which is in line with the spending levels set with the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), the debt limit deal struck by President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
The deal arose just about two weeks before funding for many government agencies was set to expire. The first tranche of agency funding was set to expire, while the remainder would end on February 2.
In his letter to House lawmakers, Johnson said that the “final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like.”
The Speaker said that the deal would remove in overall “$30 billion total reduction” from the Senate’s spending plans. He explained that there would be $10 billion in cuts to the IRS mandatory funding, and $6.1 billion from the “Biden administration’s continued COVID-era slush funds.”
“While these final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like, this deal does provide us a path to: 1) move the process forward; 2) reprioritize funding within the topline towards conservative objectives, instead of last year’s Schumer-Pelosi omnibus; and 3) fight for the important policy riders included in our House FY24 bills,” Johnson continued.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a joint statement that the framework would continue protecting “key domestic priorities like veterans benefits, health care and nutrition assistance from the draconian cuts sought by right-wing extremists.”
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SOURCE: www.breitbart.com
RELATED: Speaker Johnson unveils long-elusive deal to avert shutdown as border compromise takes shape
The deal Speaker Johnson announced closely mirrors the top-line figures in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 — the debt limit compromise deal.
Published January 7, 2024
With some 12 days until the first half of a partial government shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson has unveiled a deal to keep the lights on.
Johnson (R-La.) announced an accord for a top-line discretionary budget of “$1.59 trillion,” hovering around the figure set in the debt ceiling deal last year — largely in keeping with Democrats’ demands.
Specifically, the top-line figures for appropriations entail $888 billion for defense and $704 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, according to Johnson.
“The agreement today achieves key modifications to the June framework that will secure more than $16 billion in additional spending cuts to offset the discretionary spending levels,” Johnson wrote in a dear colleague letter.
Notably, the top-line deal Johnson announced also appears to include an additional $69 billion in other side deals. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) pegged nondefense discretionary in the pact at roughly $773 billion.
Congress has until Jan. 19 to wrangle through the first tranche of appropriations bills, then until Feb. 2 for the second tranche to avoid a partial government shutdown.
Conservative hardliners had sought a top-line appropriations figure closer to the $1.47 trillion mark, which bogged down the appropriations process for months.
But in November of last year, the Freedom Caucus’s leadership appeared to relent and indicated that the $1.59 trillion could suffice given the intransigence of Democrats on the matter.
Detractors in the House had pilloried former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for his deal to avoid a default in late May of last year that featured the $1.59 trillion top-line.
At the time, Congress was grappling with the government’s borrowing authority via the debt ceiling. Now, Congress is wrestling with government funding via the appropriations process.
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SOURCE: www.nypost.com
