Washington: Congressmen of the US legislature took the Christmas break, heading home leaving two critical issues unresolved pushing the biggest battles to the New Year, such as striking a deal on the annual spending bill and the disputed Ukraine funding.
Congress resumes its sitting on January 9 after the festivities are over having just two short weeks to fund transportation, housing, agriculture and energy programs by January 19, followed by only three additional days when both chambers – Senate & House– need to fund all federal agencies before the government shuts down on February 2, media reports said.
Under a two-laddered formula proposed by speaker Mike Johnson , the Congressmen were given time until January 19 and February 2 to resolve the appropriations bills to avoid government shutdown.
The legislators in both the houses do not seem to agree on how much they want to spend, putting work in the bicameral legislature in a logjam to pass the Biden administration’s $1.7 trillion budget now trimmed to $1.59 trillion.
The fight over funding for Ukraine (around $61 billion) and the southern border securities policies are tied to the appropriations bills.
Senate negotiators have opted to stay in Washington DC to work out a framework deal but divisions persist between the senate and the house and within the Democratic party that will make the Ukraine funding hang in the balance, reports said.
European allies of the US are exerting pressure on the Biden administration to get the Ukraine funding passed as they fear Ukraine could fall to Russia.
The Hungarian Prime Minister has opposed any funding to Ukraine.
Republican congressmen are opposing funding to Ukraine as they said the issue on the southern borders such as Texas and California needed funding to prevent the massive influx of people from South America such as Venezuela and Mexico due to disturbed political conditions at home.
USA Today in a special dispatch on Saturday said as part of the debt ceiling agreement brokered this spring, President Joe Biden and then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy agreed to spend $1.59 trillion on the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October.
That deal, codified into law as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, included an additional $69 billion in non-defence spending that was not included in the law itself.
House Republicans voted McCarthy out of Speakership replacing him with Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. The ultra conservative Republicans in the house are edging Johnson to drop the $69 billion they call “gimmicks” but which got many Democrats to sign on to the debt ceiling deal, Today reported.
Johnson said earlier this week that House Republicans would stick to the $1.59 trillion but reject the $69 billion, which would cut non-defence spending by more than 9 per cent below 2023 levels.
“The Senate has been projecting and writing well above (the FRA) by billions of dollars. That’s not what the law says,” he said.
“As the rule-of-law team, we’re going to follow the law.”
Johnson’s statement is entirely out of step with both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, where they are more aligned on adhering to the original Biden-McCarthy deal on limiting government spending.
Johnson’s unique “laddered funding” set out in November to resolve the differences between his party men and the Democrat’s poses a great challenge to the Congress to meet the deadlines for funding.
Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer lamented that Russian President Vladimir Putin was eager to see the appropriations fail to defund Ukraine so that he can retake the lost soviet territory before summer as a counter offensive by Ukraine military was folding up.
