WASHINGTON UPDATE
MARCH 15, 2024
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET ACTIVITY
Last week President Biden signed into law a six-bill funding measure after the House and Senate passed it. The measure contains spending for the following appropriations bills: Transportation - HUD, Interior -Environment, Military Construction -VA, Agriculture, Commerce -Justice-Science and Energy-Water Development. It will fund these agencies through the remainder of the fiscal year which is September 30. The six-bill package will cost $467.5 billion. The earmarks contained in the bills hopefully will become available in the next month or so.
Funding for the remaining six spending bills expires on March 22 . The remaining bills are Defense, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Labor-HHS, Legislative Branch, Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations. The funding for these six bills totals $1.2 trillion. Defense comprises $826 billion of that spending.
Problems remain with these bills. Negotiations over the Fiscal Year 2024 Homeland Security bill have fallen apart and lawmakers are now planning for a full -year continuing resolution for the agency. The yearlong stopgap bill for the agency would count as "full -year appropriations" and not trigger automatic cuts on April 30 that were laid out in the debt limit law . Additionally, there are remaining issues with the Defense and Labor -HHS-Education bill, but those issues are being worked on and should be resol ved. The hope is to release bill language for the remaining bills this weekend, maybe Sunday night.
THE LEGISLATIVE CLOCK IS RUNNING ON TIK -TOK
The House passed a bill that could ban TikTok (also known as The Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act ) in a lopsided 352-65 vote on Wednesday. The bill would force ByteDance, TikTok’s China -based parent company, to divest the app within roughly five months of going into effect or be banned from U.S. app stores and web hosting services.
The bill moves to the Senate. Consideration of the bill could take longer depending on whether it goes to the Commerce Committee where the Chair has expressed an interest in amending the bill.
Also, there is opposition from Senator Rand Paul (R -KY) who believes it is unconstitutional. (See quote below.) Senator Paul also argued that some Americans have a financial stake in ByteDance (parent of TikTok) and that such a ban would be taking property away from Americans without proving a crime first. President Biden has indicated he will sign it into law.
BUDGET
The White House released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget request to Congress on Monday, March
11. This is part of the unofficial start of the next fiscal year budget season. Remember we are still finishing off work on the FY2024 budget. This is more of a political document and wish list than anything that will likely become law.
QUOTABLE QUOTE (S)
Senator Rand Paul (R -KY) said of the TikTok bill, “TikTok is banned in China. We’re thinking – or people who want to ban it are thinking – Wow, we’re going to really defeat the Chinese communists, by becoming Chinese authoritarians and banning it in our country? TikTok is banned in China. So, we’re going to emulate the Chinese communists by banning it in our country? It makes no sense whatsoever .” Senator Paul has a libertarian streak in him . His father , former Congressman Ron Paul, ran for President under the Libertarian Party label.