Lawmakers Boost Military, Domestic Spending in $1.65 Trillion Omnibus Bill
Package, which includes $44.9 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies, must be passed by Congress this week
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers unveiled Tuesday a wide-ranging, $1.65 trillion spending bill for fiscal 2023 with sharp increases in military and domestic funding, kicking off a sprint to pass the measure before Christmas in the last act of the Democratic-controlled Congress.
The bill, the product of months of behind-the-scenes haggling, also carries an additional $44.9 billion in aid to help Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, $40.6 billion for disasters such as drought and hurricanes, as well as funds earmarked for projects in lawmakers’ home districts. It includes changes to the 1887 Electoral Count Act that would make it harder to block the certification of a presidential election, widens a ban on TikTok on government devices, and extends a Dec. 27 deadline for Boeing Co. to secure federal safety approvals for two new versions of the 737 MAX airplane.
The bill includes $858 billion in military spending, $45 billion more than President Biden had requested and up about 10% from $782 billion the prior year. Senate negotiators said it also includes $772.5 billion in nondefense discretionary spending, up almost 6% from $730 billion from the prior year. The overall discretionary price tag works out to about $1.65 trillion, compared with $1.5 trillion the prior fiscal year.
Congress must pass the spending package through both chambers before the expiration of an interim funding bill that runs through Dec. 23. Because of the delays built into the Senate’s process, quick enactment will depend on whether all 100 senators can agree to forgo debate time and proceed to a final vote. The Senate is expected to vote first, followed by the House, where leaders have told lawmakers to expect a vote late Wednesday at the earliest.
The bill will require support of at least 10 Republicans in the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are required for most legislation to advance. In a first procedural step Tuesday evening, the Senate voted 70-25 to proceed to the bill.
Many House Republicans have urged their Senate colleagues to reject the package and push talks into next year, when the GOP will control the House. But Republican senators have largely coalesced behind the plan, and even opponents indicated that they would not try to slow things down.
“Under no circumstances are we going to go over the shutdown deadline” in the Senate, said Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah). He was among a small group of Senate Republicans who grumbled over the length of the bill and the short time they had been given to review it—though they said they wouldn’t try to delay its passage, beyond requesting amendment votes.
“After a lot of hard work, this package represents an aggressive and essential investment in American families, American workers, and in our national defense,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).
The Biden administration said it supports the legislation and urged quick passage.
Senate Republicans said that the increases in military spending represented GOP victories, claiming that the deal broke a yearslong bargain to ensure parity between increases in defense and nondefense spending. That is because inflation as measured by the consumer-price index is up 7.1% from a year earlier, and while the defense-spending increase exceeded that level, the nondefense discretionary spending increase fell short of the inflation rate.
“A big real-dollar increase for the defense baseline, and a big real-dollar cut for the nondefense, nonveterans baseline,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) “This is an impressive outcome for the Republican negotiators, and more importantly, it is the outcome that our country needs.”
House Republican leaders have urged their rank-and-file members to oppose the package, arguing that negotiations should be pushed into next year, when GOP control of the chamber will give it more leverage. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) is leading the opposition as he seeks to cajole members to support his bid to be elected House speaker next year. But the bill can pass the House with only Democratic votes, and GOP Senate leaders have insisted on finishing the legislation this Congress.
The bill incorporates the Senate’s version of the Electoral Count Reform Act, bipartisan legislation that overhauls an 1887 law governing how Congress counts and ratifies presidential elector votes. The bill was written in response to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his supporters to try to overturn the 2020 election results. It would make clear that Congress’s role in ratifying states’ Electoral College votes is ministerial only, and that the vice president’s role is limited to counting the votes publicly.
It would dramatically raise the threshold to sustain an objection to a state’s electors from one House member and one senator to one-fifth of both chambers, and establish a fast-tracked judicial review of disputes related to states’ elector certificates, including a three-judge panel with a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.
A bipartisan bill that would expand incentives for retirement savings also made it into the package. Lawmakers have been working for months to reconcile House and Senate versions. The legislation would raise the starting age for required minimum distributions from tax-deferred accounts, encourage enrollment in retirement plans and expand savings incentives for low-income households. It also includes new limits on aggressive tax deals known as syndicated conservation easements.