Congress passes the FY2024 budget, a breakdown
Congress passes the FY2024 budget, a breakdown
Polygraph | Newsletter n°240 | 24 March 2024
Situation
On Thursday, congressional leaders released the text of a $1.2 trillion spending package comprised of six annual appropriations bills. Biden immediately gave it his blessing and promised to sign the legislation “immediately.” The House passed it on Friday, the Senate followed suit early Saturday, and Biden signed it into law Saturday afternoon.
That’s an awfully quick turnaround for a 1,012-page bill. I didn’t get through the whole thing and by the looks of it, many lawmakers didn’t either. For example, Sen. Bennet claimed that the legislation “failed to include any financial support for Ukraine,” even though it did, as a budget boffin pointed out on Twitter:
Overview
The fiscal year started October 1, but until yesterday only six of the twelve annual spending bills had been enacted. The budgets for the Pentagon, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Labor/Health and Human Services/Education, Legislative Branch, and State Department were running on temporary funding measures called continuing resolutions (CR) that more or less maintain funding levels from the previous year. Congress’ original plan was to enact full-year budgets for five of them and slap another CR on Homeland Security. But the White House intervened early last week, demanding a full-year budget for Homeland Security, arguing that FY2023-level funding wasn’t enough to fund Biden’s border priorities. This intervention and subsequent delay almost caused a government shutdown.
The other six annual spending bills were passed en bloc earlier this month. Together, the 12 bills form a $1.63 trillion discretionary budget for FY2024. This is only about $800 million more than the amount enacted by the FY2023 omnibus legislation.
In the context of flat federal spending, the $27 billion boost to the Pentagon bill gives it a greater share of the overall budget. What’s more, half of Energy and Water’s $4 billion increase is for nuclear weapons (see page 182 here). Combined with the military funding in other appropriations bills, the Pentagon will eat $886 billion, or more than 54 percent of discretionary spending in FY2024, up two percent from last year.
^Alt text for screen readers: A breakdown of the fiscal year 2024 budget. This table shows twelve appropriations bills, the amount in each one, and the change from 2023. The following amounts are in billions of dollars. Pentagon: 842, plus 27. Transportation, HUD: 97, plus 10. Energy and Water: 58, plus 4. Homeland Security: 82, plus 1. Agriculture: 26, plus .748. Legislative branch: 7, minus .150. Interior and Environment: 41, minus .200. Military construction, VA: 154, minus .248. State, Foreign Operations: 58, minus 1. Labor, HHS, Education: 197, minus 13. Financial Services: 14, minus 14. Commerce, Justice, Science: 69, minus 14. Data: Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024; Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024; Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023. Nominal values. More: stephen semler dot substack dot com
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Alan F., Andrew R., Anthony R., Anthony T., Bart B., BeepBoop, Cole D., David S., Francis M., Frowland, George C., Jennie S., Jerry S., Kenny S., Linda B., Lora L., Marie R., Mark G., Megan., Omar D., Peter M., Philip L., Richard M., Springseep, Tony L.
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-Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org). Follow me on Bluesky.
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