House Vote On First FY2025 Spending Bill Underway Shortly

The House is set to vote shortly on the ~USD$380 billion Military Construction-VA appropriations bill – the first spending bill of FY2025. The MilCon-VA bill, usually the most bipartisan of the annual spending bills, appears set to renew partisan disputes over the legitimacy of the topline numbers outlined by the Fiscal Responsibility Act – negotiated by President Biden and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

• Punchbowl News reports that Republican appropriator Tom Cole (R-OK) intends to use FRA levels minus multi-billion dollar “side deals” negotiated by Biden and McCarthy, arguing that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) isn’t bound by the agreement.
• Punchbowl notes that Cole’s position would lead to, “big cuts in domestic spending while the Pentagon’s budget would increase by $9 billion. Funding for the departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs would also be boosted. Bills such as Labor-HHS, State-Foreign Ops and Financial Services-General Government would see double-digit cuts.”
• Cole’s numbers, which come in under the 1% minimum increase in non-defence spending dictated by the FRA, put Republican and Democrat spending priorities tens of billions of dollars apart
• Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT), the top Democrat appropriator said: “It really is going down the same road... It’s going to be the same catastrophe as it was last year.”
• Considering election year dynamics, lawmakers are near-certain to legislate a Continuing Resolution to punt funding beyond November's presidential election. The hawkish GOP numbers also point towards another challenging appropriations process likely to involve more intra-GOP volatility.