Congress is on track to avoid another government shutdown at the end of the month, after lawmakers released a bipartisan agreement on four remaining funding bills Tuesday.
The $1.2 trillion package would fund the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Education, making up the lion’s share of federal funding Congress controls.
There is about a week and a half before the shutdown deadline Jan. 30. Democrats have raised concerns about funding the Department of Homeland Security — which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement — after an ICE officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis this month.
But top Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations committees said they support the agreement, arguing that the DHS funding bill includes money for other agencies, such as FEMA, the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard, and that ICE would be able to continue operating under a shutdown anyway because it was given $75 billion through the Republican tax and spending bill passed last year.
The longest shutdown in U.S. history ended in November when lawmakers funded the government through the end of January, and members in both parties seemed wary of another one now.
“The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality,” Sen. Patty Murray (Washington), the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “Under a [temporary funding bill] and in a shutdown, this administration can do everything they are already doing — but without any of the critical guardrails and constraints imposed by a full-year funding bill.”
The compromise bill would appropriate $10 billion for ICE while reducing funding for enforcement and removal operations by $115 million. It would also require DHS to use $20 million for body cameras for ICE agents and include $20 million for inspections and oversight for ICE detention facilities.
The House is expected to vote on the package later this week, including a separate vote on the DHS bill. If it passes, the Senate would need to vote on the legislation next week to avoid another shutdown.
The package includes new directives on how the White House Office of Management and Budget can spend congressionally appropriated funding and ignores several of the administration’s proposed cuts. For instance, it would spend slightly more money for the Education Department over current levels, rather than cutting funding for the agency as President Donald Trump has proposed.
The agreement does not address the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies that expired at the beginning of the year, but it does include a bipartisan health care deal that would restrict prescription drug middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers.
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