House lawmakers are poised to advance a two-year break from federal spending caps imposed by a 2011 law that sought to reduce the debt.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., introduced the measure Tuesday and said his panel will vote to advance it Wednesday. A House vote could come next week, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said.
The measure would lift the domestic spending limit by 5.7 percent, to $631 billion in fiscal 2020 and to $646 billion in fiscal 2021. The measure would raise defense spending by 2.6 percent over the current cap, to $664 billion in 2020. Defense spending would be limited to $680 billion in fiscal 2021.
The plan does not adhere to President Trump’s proposed 2020 budget that provides an overall $750 billion in military spending while keeping domestic spending capped at $542 billion.
House Republicans said they were not included in writing the proposal. They criticized Democrats for failing to introduce a 10-year budget resolution that would outline their spending priorities rather than just lift the spending caps.
“House Democrats are not focused on doing a budget, nor are they focused on addressing our nation’s mountainous debt,” Steve Womack, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said Tuesday. “This bill doesn’t include offsets or bipartisan input, key components of past caps deals. For that matter, it’s not clear there is even partisan support for this bill. I intend to raise these and other concerns at our markup tomorrow.”
The two-year deal would take federal spending past the 2021 expiration date of the Budget Control Act, which lawmakers passed after they failed to come up with a bipartisan debt-reducing strategy but have mostly ignored.
The new cap numbers adhere to Yarmuth’s desire to proportionally raise the federal limit on domestic spending more than defense, even though overall defense spending is higher. “By moving this bill forward, we will bring responsible governing back to the budget process, avoid uncertainty and the unrelenting threats of a government shutdown, and meet our obligations to the American people,” Yarmuth said Tuesday.
The measure is co-sponsored by Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.
House lawmakers are eager to set top-line numbers for defense and domestic spending so that appropriators can begin writing fiscal 2020 legislation in late April, when Congress returns from a two-week spring recess.
Congress must pass fiscal 2021 spending legislation by the end of the fiscal year, which is Sept. 30.
Even if the House approves the new caps, it’s not the final word on spending limits.
The Senate, run by Republicans, will produce its own new caps on federal spending and will then have to negotiate with the House on a compromise between the two chambers.
Lawmakers have approved four bipartisan bills over the past eight years that allow them to exceed the caps.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told the Washington Examiner that Senate lawmakers do not have a deal in their chamber on spending caps yet.
