Congress Funds the Government

Before MLK Day, Congress agreed to, and President Obama signed, a compromise $1.012 trillion appropriations bill to fund government agency activities for the balance of Fiscal Year 2014.  The bill, the detailed follow-up to the Murray-Ryan Budget agreement passed in December, spells out discretionary spending for every line item in the 12 annual appropriations bills, but does so under a single Omnibus Appropriations measure.

Traditionally, the goal of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees is to each pass 12 individual appropriations bills, meet in conference to reconcile differences, and then each house of Congress pass the final bills one-by-one.  This time around, rather than moving each measure separately, lawmakers completed their work on all 12 bills in a single action - an Omnibus Appropriations Act.

Despite early speculation that the budget agreement would lead to sweeping changes by closing tax loopholes and placing entitlement reforms on the table, the December budget agreement did not include any tax reforms and the Omnibus Appropriations Bill only addresses discretionary spending.  Major entitlement programs remain largely unchanged.

Although a short (three-day) continuing resolution was needed to buy lawmakers the time to pass the 2014 appropriations law and avoid a shutdown like the one we saw in October 2013, this round of deal-making had very little of the political brinksmanship that has impacted much of the last several years.  This fact alone is cause for some optimism as lawmakers turn their attention to the February Debt Ceiling debate and Fiscal Year 2015 funding.  However, in this high-pressure environment with mid-term elections on the horizon, for most, this optimism remains cautious.