House and Senate leaders on Sunday announced a spending deal for government funding in 2024, the first step to averting a shutdown later this month even as that threat still looms.
The topline numbers agreed to by House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer include $1.59 trillion for fiscal year 2024, with $886 billion for defense spending and $704 in non-defense spending. They also agreed to a $69 billion side deal in adjustments that will go toward non-defense domestic spending.
The side deal brings the non-defense spending figure to nearly $773 billion, a Democratic source told CNN, with spending close to $1.66 trillion overall.
While their agreement on funding levels will reduce the chances of a shutdown, there are still major hurdles facing Congress ahead of two funding deadlines: January 19 and February 2.
I don’t think this is really an agreement at all.
Johnson’s statement said it was agreement of the top line numbers for 2024 and that now negotiations will begin. So this is just like the shit they did last year – Democrats have negotiated what they think the final numbers are going to be while Republicans think they’ve negotiated the upper bound and are now free to use any and all leverage to push the number as low as possible.