WASHINGTON — The Senate cleared a six-bill, $468.7 billion spending measure Friday ahead of a midnight deadline to prevent a partial government shutdown for several agencies funded in the bill.
The 75-22 vote sends the measure to the White House for President Joe Biden’s signature. The package includes the fiscal 2024 Military-Construction-VA measure, which is the underlying vehicle, and the Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Interior-Environment and Transportation-HUD bills.
The measure would provide a $2.6 billion, or 0.6%, increase over the comparable enacted fiscal 2023 level, though the two parties dispute some of the funding assumptions made by each side.
For instance, Democrats believe an extra $1.2 billion in Superfund tax receipts, available to be spent in fiscal 2024 for the first time, should count toward the EPA total — reducing the overall cut to that agency that Republicans have touted.
That extra Superfund money, which doesn’t show up in the bill’s official cost estimate, brings the total package to $468.7 billion. Even then, Republicans can still plausibly say the bill would reduce nondefense spending, outside of veterans health care, for the first time in years. Most of the partisan policy provisions sought by House Republicans fell out in the end. But one big one — ending a decades-old Department of Veterans Affairs policy barring some beneficiaries from being able to own guns — remained in the end.
Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., telegraphed in advance that he’d vote against the package because of the inclusion of the gun-related VA policy rider, which led two House Democrats to oppose the package as well. The provision would overturn a 1993 law that prevents veterans deemed incompetent to manage their finances from purchasing guns and ammunition.
“I just can’t, in good conscience, vote to add a new gun rider to the appropriations process,” said Murphy, who has been one of Capitol Hill’s most passionate gun control advocates since his home state was rocked by the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.
The bill faced the most opposition from conservatives in both chambers, who blasted it for spending too much money.
Conservatives have called out the measure for including more than 6,600 individual home-state earmarks totaling $12.7 billion. Eight other Senate Republicans signed onto a resolution that Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., introduced Thursday that expresses opposition to earmarks.
“Pork-barrel spending sounds bad, and smells worse,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said during debate Friday. “Pork-barrel spending is the original sin of Congress, that big government types can’t rid themselves of, can’t rinse themselves clean of.”