WASHINGTON — Congress completed work Friday on a roughly $1.7 trillion package to fund the federal government through fiscal year 2023, with the House voting 225-201 to accept a bill the Senate approved 68-29 one day earlier. The legislation now heads to President Joe Biden after lawmakers compressed 12 annual appropriations bills, emergency assistance and a wide range of policy provisions into one of the final major measures of the 117th Congress.
The package provides $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion for defense, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s summary. It also includes $44.9 billion in emergency assistance related to Ukraine and NATO allies and $40.6 billion for disaster and other emergency needs, pushing the overall legislation to about $1.7 trillion.
A year’s funding assembled in a year-end bill
The measure is formally H.R. 2617, an earlier House bill repurposed as the legislative vehicle for the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. The Senate-passed text runs millions of words across the 12 regular appropriations divisions and numerous additional legislative packages. Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy said in his introduction statement that the agreement provides agencies certainty for the rest of the fiscal year while increasing resources for national defense, veterans, health, research, nutrition, housing and other domestic programs.
Among the major figures, the bill provides $118.7 billion for Department of Veterans Affairs medical care, $47.5 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $9.2 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. It also includes $1.8 billion in new implementation funding for the CHIPS and Science Act and $5 billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund created under the PACT Act.
Republican negotiators emphasized the defense side of the agreement. Senate Appropriations Vice Chairman Richard Shelby said in his Dec. 20 statement that the package raises defense funding by about 10% and preserves longstanding policy provisions while reducing the level of non-defense spending sought in the administration’s budget request. That compromise helped create the bipartisan margin required to move the bill through the Senate.
Senate passes the package with 68 votes
The Senate approved the amended bill Thursday by 68-29, easily clearing the 60-vote threshold established for the motion. The chamber spent much of the day processing amendments covering immigration, health benefits for Sept. 11 responders, pregnant workers, merger fees and other issues. The Senate’s floor record documents the final vote after a rapid series of amendment decisions.
The House returned Friday despite severe winter weather disrupting travel across much of the country. Its final roll call was 225 in favor, 201 against and one member voting present. Most Republicans opposed the package, arguing that lawmakers were given too little time to review the enormous bill and that spending should have been deferred until the incoming House Republican majority could negotiate fiscal 2023 funding. Democrats and Republican supporters countered that failing to finish appropriations would extend uncertainty, invite repeated stopgap bills and complicate defense and agency planning.
Election-count rules and TikTok restrictions ride with appropriations
The omnibus is also a vehicle for policy changes unrelated to the annual funding tables. The House Congressional Record lists the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act as Division P and the No TikTok on Government Devices Act as Division R, along with retirement, aviation, veterans, antitrust, consumer-protection and other provisions.
The election-count measure is intended to clarify the procedures Congress and the vice president follow when presidential electoral votes are certified. It raises the threshold for congressional objections and makes explicit that the vice president’s role in the count is ministerial rather than a unilateral power to accept or reject electoral votes. The changes grew out of disputes surrounding the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
The TikTok provision requires the removal of the social-media application from information technology owned or managed by the federal government, subject to limited exceptions. Its inclusion reflects expanding national-security concern in Congress over data controlled by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The provision follows Senate approval this month of a stand-alone federal-device restriction.
A broad compromise with little time to spare
The size and structure of the package make it a classic omnibus: thousands of individual funding decisions and numerous pieces of legislation are bound together because congressional leaders could not complete the regular appropriations process bill by bill. Supporters say that approach is preferable to a year-long continuing resolution that would freeze many programs at older levels. Critics say it concentrates too much decision-making in leadership negotiations and gives rank-and-file lawmakers inadequate opportunity to scrutinize the final text.
The emergency funding illustrates the breadth of the measure. Ukraine assistance covers military, economic and humanitarian needs as Russia’s invasion approaches its second calendar year, while domestic emergency spending responds to hurricanes, wildfire, drought, flooding and other disasters. Those additions sit beside ordinary agency budgets, making the topline considerably larger than the core defense and non-defense discretionary totals alone.
As of Saturday, Congress has finished its work on the package and the measure awaits presidential action. The final votes close months of appropriations negotiations and establish federal spending priorities through Sept. 30, 2023. They also attach durable policy changes to a must-pass funding vehicle, ensuring that this year’s omnibus will be remembered for more than its $1.7 trillion price tag.
