The breaking news for Monday is that the US House of Representatives, even though they promised to be bold for the American people and focused on the US Southern Border, have made a deal and alerted the media that there will be no realistic extra border security in their next budget.
Business will go on as usual, keeping the administrative state in its cushy jobs, according to Speaker Mike Johnson – keeping all of the government programs of Equity fully funded. Their deal will not put any law enforcement in the areas we need them to be.
In other words, Johnson doesn’t care about the concerns of US Rep. Andy Biggs:
According to a letter from Johnson to ABC News, he didn’t have what was needed to defend the demands of those worried about the border, like Biggs and others in his party.
House Reps Johnson is pretending that throwing money at the illegal invasion at the border is going to protect the American people. Conservatives wanted increased border security- not more taxpayer funds for programs and policies.
We covered the details of what is really needed from the US House for better national security- last week:
ABC News reported Sunday night on the details of the deal Mike Johnsson made from a corporate media point of view:
Congressional leaders have finally reached agreement on the overall price tag of the next batch of government spending bills, lawmakers announced on Sunday — a significant step toward averting a partial shutdown that will begin later this month.
The deal would set topline spending for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion, initially agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during negotiations over the government’s debt limit last year.
The framework proposes keeping the $886 billion agreed to for defense funding in the 2024 fiscal year while maintaining the $704 billion in non-defense spending that Democrats insisted upon during the debt limit negotiations.
Agreeing on those figures allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to begin working on the text of individual spending bills — an ongoing point of contention on Capitol Hill, particularly among House Republicans, a faction of whom ousted McCarthy in October amid infighting over how to move forward on spending legislation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was chosen to succeed McCarthy, confirmed the critical details of the agreement in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday afternoon.
Johnson touted concessions Republicans secured in the deal, including an expedited $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS and a claw-back of about $6 billion in remaining COVID-19 relief funds.
Johnson, in his letter, conceded that the “final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like,” but he noted that the agreement would allow the funding process to move forward while enabling negotiators “reprioritize funding within the topline towards conservative objectives.”
However, the new speaker could face an uphill battle selling this deal to some other conservatives. Many House Republicans wanted much more substantive cuts to the budget.
But the agreement does clear a pathway for lawmakers to begin working to try to quickly draft and pass spending bills before the first of the government funding deadlines on Jan. 19.
Agriculture, energy, housing, and transportation programs, among others, are all slated to run out of funds on that date under the last stopgap government funding bill passed by Congress in the fall.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed in a joint statement on Sunday that the agreement was a win for Democrats in that it keeps intact Biden’s negotiations while side-stepping Republican objection.
“The bipartisan topline appropriations agreement clears the way for Congress to act over the next few weeks in order to maintain important funding priorities for the American people … The framework agreement to proceed will enable the appropriators to address many of the major challenges America faces at home and abroad,” Schumer and Jeffries said.
On Sunday, Biden supported the funding framework, saying it “rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on.”
The president also urged congressional Republicans to reach a deal on border funds and military aid for Israel and Ukraine, issues that remain tied up in Washington as conservatives push for significant immigration policy changes.
Lawmakers must work quickly to strike a deal to stop the latest government shutdown.
Johnson wrote in his letter that he will fight for critical policy riders that Republicans want. But Schumer and Jeffries, in their statement, said they’ve made clear to the speaker that they will oppose such “poison pill policy changes.”
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on her chamber’s appropriations committee, said in a statement on Sunday that “we cannot afford to delay further, so I will be working with my colleagues around the clock in the coming days to prevent a needless shutdown and pass bipartisan spending bills free of partisan poison pills that protect key investments and help meet the challenges our constituents are facing.”