U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Los Angeles), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) , House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), at the White House on February 27, 2024 in Washington, DC.
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President Joe Biden signed Congress’s $1.2 trillion spending plan on Saturday, finalizing the remaining bills in the long-awaited budget to keep the government funded through Oct. 1.
Nearly halfway through the fiscal year, the president’s signature ends a months-long saga congress Instead of working to secure a permanent budget solution, a government shutdown was all but avoided through stopgap measures.
“The bipartisan appropriations bill I just signed keeps the government open, invests in the American people, and strengthens our economy and national security,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday. “This agreement represents a compromise. , which means neither side gets everything they want.”
The weekend budget deal was struck ahead of Friday’s midnight funding deadline, as is typical this fiscal year with last-minute disagreements derailing a nearly-complete deal.
The Senate passed the budget 74-24 around 2 a.m. ET on Saturday, technically two hours behind the deadline due to last-minute disagreements. However, the White House said a formal shutdown would not begin now that the deal has finally been reached and only procedural actions remain.
After a week of efforts, the House passed its own vote Friday morning to resolve a lingering sticking point: funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which the White House objected to over the weekend. As lawmakers prepared to release the legislative text of the budget proposal, White House concerns further delayed the negotiation process.
The six appropriations bills worth trillions of dollars will provide funding for defense, financial services, homeland security, health and human services and other related agencies. Congress approved $459 billion in the first six funding bills in early March, which involved less partisan and easier-to-negotiate agencies.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has addressed at least one looming issue as the government finally funds the rest of the fiscal year.
But in doing so, he may have created another.
On Friday morning, hours before the House passed the spending package, hard-line House Republicans held a press conference to lambast the bill. Shortly after the House narrowly passed the bill, far-right Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a motion to oust Johnson.
If ousting the House speaker over budget disagreements feels like a familiar story, that’s because it is.
In October, the House voted to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy from office after he struck a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, making him the first speaker in history to be fired. Johnson has been trying to appease the House’s hardline Republican Freedom Caucus to avoid a similar fate.
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