CAPITOL HILL POLITICS (Washington Insider Magazine) – On Thursday, March 10th, Congress passed the first major spending bill of President Biden’s administration. It is a $1.5 trillion bill that substantially increases domestic and national security programs. This legislation also includes $13.6 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.
The bill, which reached over 2700 total pages, was approved by the Senate with a vote of 68 to 31 this being a mere two days after it was finalized and approved by the House. The speed by which the bill was approved shows the bipartisan support that Ukraine has received, and the sense of urgency to potentially avoid another government shutdown that was scheduled to occur in the next few days.
The funds from the bill, which will allow the government to run through to September, also include domestic programs spearheaded by Democrats and military spending pushed by Republicans. This marks the first time since President Biden took office that the Democratic party had unified control of Congress to the point that they were able to enact a spending bill that reflected their priorities. Their priorities include investing in public assistance programs, climate resilience, and aid for other infrastructure projects.
New York Senator and majority leader Chuck Schumer were quoted saying that this bill was one of the most large-scale and bold government funding packages that he had ever seen in his tenure. It comes as no surprise, as Ukraine has been petitioning the United States and its respective allies for as much aid as possible under unprecedented Russian attacks.
In order to make the bill work, Democrats had to drop some of their priorities such as the White House’s request for more pandemic aid. Republicans were adamantly objecting to spending any new federal money on COVID19 response.
This forced Democrats to downsize the bill, and find other ways to obtain the funding they wanted including making the state governments pay for it. The new strategy did not resonate with the governors and lower ranking Democratic government officials, who refused to pull state funding from other projects to pay for the missing funds for the proposed bill.
Ultimately, the aid was pulled from the bill in hopes of obtaining bipartisan support.
Republicans were able to obtain an additional increase of $42 billion to the military spending budget which rose to a total of $782 billion this year. Democrats then secured a $46 billion increase for domestic programs, making the total for the year an amassed $730 billion – which is the largest investment in just over four years.
Vermont Senator Patrick J. Leahy who leads the Appropriations Committee was quoted stating that the bill fundamentally supports America’s future prosperity, and promotes cost reduction for citizens throughout the country. Identified areas of potentially lower costs included childcare, college education, heating, and cooling costs.
After long deliberations and arguments over the bill, in total lasted more than five months past October 1st which was the start of the fiscal year it was supposed to fund, it finally came to a conclusion. To secure the support from the other side, Democrats agreed to the military spending and Republicans agreed to funding many additional Democratically-supported focuses.
