Dear Friend,

Here are the key points to fully understand what happened in Congress this past week:

1)  There are twelve annual appropriations bills that fund the Discretionary Spending portion of the federal budget, which constitutes roughly 25 percent of the total budget.  Because the federal Fiscal Year (FY) begins on October 1, it means the House and the Senate each have to agree on every one of the twelve bills by September 30 and the President must sign each into law to prevent a shutdown of the federal government.

2)  The House alone does not dictate spending.  All spending must originate in the House, but the Senate must agree to what the House has passed as well as the President for these spending provisions to become law.  Agreement with the House’s original version of the appropriations measures has never happened, even when one party ruled the House, Senate and the White House.  The leaders and members of all three institutions have always had to negotiate to reach a compromise to keep the government running. 

3) A Continuing Resolution (CR) is passed to keep the government operating until all three institutions can come to an agreement on the appropriations measures.  Those CRs typically fund the government at the same level of spending and will sometimes include new policy riders provided that all three agree.  

Here’s what transpired this past week….

The House voted on four appropriations bills this past week; three were passed.  Those bills cut funding, included new conservative policy riders and reduced the size and scope of government.  The other one dealing with USDA and FDA funding failed. 

Another appropriations bill had already been passed by the House in July so this put the House at four bills passed so far, constituting about 70 percent of total Discretionary Spending.  In comparison, the Senate has not passed an appropriations bill so far. 

With the fiscal year ending on Saturday at Midnight, a CR had to be passed to keep the government running.  Late last week, the House considered a CR that cut spending 27% across the board for all programs except for those in the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, which were kept at current year funding levels.  (Excluding these equates to an 8% overall cut.) 

Included on this CR were two significant policy items — one dealing with devising a pathway to reform entitlements which constitutes about 69% of the budget (the debt service payment is what pushes up Mandatory/Entitlement Spending to 75% of the budget) and other provisions requiring the reinstatement of border policies that the previous administration had used to successfully control the border. 

This CR was rejected by all but one Democrat and 21 House Republicans that would have presumably preferred to shut down the government until all appropriation matters were negotiated to completion with the White House and the Senate.  This would take to mid-November at the earliest. 

At that point, one of two things was going to happen.  Either the Senate was going to force a vote in the House by passing a CR first that included no cuts as well as $6 billion more for Ukraine, or the House could pass a CR first with no cuts that included disaster assistance for Hawaii and other states affected by natural disasters and jam the Democrats in the House and Senate.  McConnell announced that all the Senate Republicans would vote against proceeding to Senate’s CR to give the House time to get our version done.  (This is exactly why one Democrat pulled the fire alarm in the House to try to delay the House vote!)

By passing the House version first, it effectively jammed the Senate Democrats and forced them to take the House Republican CR.

One little fact that deserves to be known: House Republicans had to bring our version of the CR to the floor under Suspension, which requires a super majority vote (290 to be exact) to pass, because there were more than four Republicans willing to tank the Rule vote necessary to pass the bill by a simple majority.  So leadership had no choice but to bring it up under Suspension which requires Democrat votes to pass.  When you vote against a Rule, you give all the power to the minority party.

There were several amendment votes this past week offered to the Defense Appropriations Bill that were designed to strip or otherwise curtail the $300 million appropriated annually to fund our troops who train Ukrainians in Germany as well as replenish our weapons stockpile.  (I was in Germany visiting with these troops earlier this year to get a first-hand look at what they are doing.)  

The History:  When Russia took Crimea in 2014, Congress started funding weaponry and training for Ukrainians in 2016.  This effort has been funded every year since.     

If this funding stops, our troops in Germany quit training the Ukrainians.  I recognize there are plenty of Americans who are fine with eliminating funding for training.  There are also many who are not.  (Those who are for and against call and write.  I hear you!)

The votes last week were not about additional supplemental funding for Ukraine.  It was all focused on the $300 million for training in Germany that we have spent each year since 2016. 

The Biden Administration has requested $24 billion more in supplemental assistance for Ukraine.  To date, Congress has not acted on that request except for the Senate’s effort to include $6 billion of it in their CR.  That was preempted with the House CR as described above.