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Congress Unveils Sweeping 'Omnibus' Funding Bill With $1.7 Trillion Price Tag

https://www.theepochtimes.com/congress-unveils-sweeping-omnibus-funding-bill-with-1-7-trillion-price-tag_4934700.html

Lawmakers have at long last unveiled the legislative text of the huge
$1.7 trillion “omnibus” government funding bill for all of fiscal year
2023, with apparent wins for both parties like boosting non-defense
discretionary spending, while keeping restrictions on funding
abortions.

“The choice is clear. We can either do our jobs and fund the
government, or we can abandon our responsibilities without a real path
forward,” Leahy said in a statement. “Passing this bipartisan,
bicameral, omnibus appropriations bill is undoubtedly in the interest
of the American people.”

Before we get into the details, The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley
Strassel sums up the bill perfectly:

    This "omnibus" is one of the ugliest, least transparent bits of
lawmaking I've ever seen...and that's saying something. It isn't just
the spending, though the new domestic numbers are gross, given the
trillions spent in the past few years.

    It's also that Congress, in a new trick, is attaching dozens of
pieces of stand-alone legislation to this--retirement changes; public
lands management; healthcare policy; cosmetics regulation; electoral
count act changes; horseracing rules.

    Every one deserves a full debate and a roll call vote, so that
Americans can see where their representatives stand. Instead, this
monstrosity is cooked in a back room, and members can claim they had
no choice but to vote against a shutdown--ducking accountability.

    Not that any members will have time to read this 4,155 pages of
bad policy, obscene spending, and self-serving pork and earmarks.
They'll just vote and go home for Christmas. Your government at work.
GOP and Ds are just as bad as each other.

The U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Aug. 6, 2022. (Anna
Rose Layden/Getty Images)

As The Epoch Times' Tom Ozimek detailed earlier, Senate Appropriations
Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) released the bill (pdf) late
Monday, urging members of the House and Senate to take up the
4,155-page bill and “pass it without delay” as government funding is
set to expire on Dec. 23 at midnight and a shutdown looms.

Failure to pass the legislation could bring a partial government
shutdown beginning Saturday and potentially lead to a months-long
standoff after Republicans assume control of the House on Jan. 3,
ending the Democrats’ monolithic grip on power in Washington.

The bill is the product of long-running negotiations between Democrats
and Republicans in Congress, which ran into less routine sticking
points like the location of the new FBI headquarters and more standard
fare like the GOP pushing back on what it views as wasteful
pork-barrel spending on programs unrelated to defense.

“This omnibus bill represents the last best chance for Democrats to
push funding for their policy initiatives before Republicans take over
control of the House—and it is already significantly scaled back from
their ambitious earlier designs,” Gerard Filitti, Senior Counsel at
The Lawfare Project, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“What is not included in this bill, among other things, is billions in
dollars in pandemic aid requested by President Biden—a category of
funds that has previously been used to fund policy initiatives only
tangentially related to the pandemic,” Filitti continued, noting
further that an enhanced Child Tax credit and cannabis banking
legislation also failed to make the cut.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Dec. 14
that,”Republicans simply were not going to lavish extra-liberal
spending” on non-defense programs into the omnibus bill.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat in the Senate, said on
Dec. 14 that, “nobody is going to get everything they want, but the
final product will include wins everyone can get behind.”

Leahy said Monday that the bill “is the product of months of hard work
and compromise” and thanked Senate Appropriations Committee Vice
Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and House Appropriations Committee
Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) for “their partnership and hard work.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks at a press
conference on the Senate Democrats expanded majority for the next
118th Congress at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Dec. 7,
2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The full details of the package were being crafted over the weekend,
with the draft released late Monday showing that the legislation
includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and
$858 billion in defense funding.

There’s also $44.9 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and
America’s NATO allies.
Both Parties Claim Wins

Members of both parties claimed their own victories in the sprawling bill.

Democrats’ wins include increased clean energy funding, more money for
nutrition and child care programs, as well as funding boosts for
various homeless and housing initiatives.

Republican victories include retaining longstanding restrictions on
funding for abortions and trimming funding for the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS).

The IRS is set to receive $12.3 billion, a $275 million cut from the
prior year’s level, a welcome development for Republicans who were
upset over the $80 billion funding boost for the tax agency outside
the regular appropriations process in a bill earlier this year that
passed without GOP backing.

Filitti explained that the omnibus bill boosts non-defense spending at
a lower rate than inflation, which means that non-defense spending
gets an effective cut in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

“The non-defense portion of the budget is only a modest increase over
the previous year (a net decrease when adjusted for inflation), and
this represents a victory to Republicans and the handful of
fiscally-responsible Democrats who want to keep spending in check,”
Filitti said.

McConnell on Monday touted the deal as a win for Republicans because
of that very reason, namely that the package raises defense spending
above the rate of inflation.
Details

    A topline summary (pdf) of each of the omnibus package’s 12
appropriations bills shows that all are slated for increases to
varying degrees.

    Agriculture-FDA (pdf): $25.48 billion, a $355 million increase
compared to the fiscal year 2022 funding level;
    Commerce-Justice-Science (pdf): $83.85 billion, an $8.1 billion increase;
    Defense (pdf): $797.7 billion, a $69.3 billion increase;
    Energy and Water (pdf): $54.65 billion, a $1.778 billion increase;
    Financial Services (pdf): $27.699 billion, a $2.067 billion increase;
    Homeland Security (pdf): $60.7 billion, a $3.2 billion increase;
    Interior-Environment (pdf): $40.45 billion, a $2.45 billion increase;
    Labor-HHS-Education (pdf): $209.9 billion, a $14.8 billion increase;
    Legislative Branch (pdf): $6.9 billion, a $975 million increase;
    Military Construction-VA (pdf): $135.2 billion in discretionary
funding and $168.6 billion in mandatory funding, representing a
combined increase of $34 billion;
    State and Foreign Operations (pdf): $61.758 billion, a $3.76
billion increase;
    Transportation-HUD (pdf): $90.955 billion, a $9.917 billion increase.

Funding for bipartisan priorities includes $58.7 billion for programs
authorized by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act; $1.8 billion
in new funding to implement the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022; and $5
billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund to implement the PACT
Act.

The package also includes $47.5 billion for the National Institutes of
Health; $9.2 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention; $1.5 billion for ARPA-H; and $950 million for the
Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

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