Congressional leaders reach a deal to fund the government, avert a shutdown
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Congressional leaders have agreed to a deal to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year. The agreement would spend $886 billion on defense spending and roughly $773 billion on nondefense spending. It's yet to pass Congress, which is key, and we'll get back to that. But those figures stick to the spending levels agreed to by President Biden and former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in a deal last summer. This all means that the largest employer in the United States, the federal government, is much more likely to be able to keep sending out paychecks to its employees because the government is much less likely to shut down. NPR's Eric McDaniel covers Congress and joins us now. Hey, Eric.
ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: How - perpetual Congress question - how far is this from a done deal?
MCDANIEL: Well, look, maybe it's 'cause it's the weekend, but I'm feeling like an optimist.
DETROW: OK.
MCDANIEL: When this announcement came out at 3:30 p.m., I was busy writing a radio script for tomorrow which said that we just had eight legislative days but effectively no plan to avoid a partial government shutdown on January 19 and a total government shutdown on February 2. But now there is sort of a plan. This is definitely a good sign. With congressional leaders on board and agreeing to a top-line number, it should be comparatively easy to get the 12 annual federal spending bills through that would fund the government for a year. But this could still get pretty ugly.
DETROW: Just how ugly, Eric?
MCDANIEL: Well, it's already shown to enrage the most anti-compromise part of the Republican Party. These are the hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus and their allies who wanted to extract huge concessions on the border, on abortion access as well as overall spending cuts in exchange for keeping the government open. Congressman Chip Roy, one of these very folks, has already called the deal terrible, adding that it gives away leverage to get the policy concessions they were looking for. House Speaker Mike Johnson, the top Republican in the House, will not be able to pass any of these spending bills with Republican votes alone. In fact, if the spending bills from last year, the short-term extensions, are any indicator, it's likely that any spending bills in a Republican-controlled Congress will actually pass with more Democratic support than Republican support. And there are lots of procedural ways that Republicans upset about all of this could make things really gnarly over these next few weeks.
DETROW: Right. We've seen that group of legislators flex their muscles again and again over the course of this Congress. That's what booted the last speaker.
MCDANIEL: Yeah.
DETROW: So what comes next here?
MCDANIEL: Well, let's go with the construction metaphor. I guess you could say they've agreed on what the square footage of the house is, how much money they're going to spend, but they still need to map out the floor plan, where all that money's going to go, get all the permits, buy the materials and actually build the house. So there's a lot of actual legislating left to be done. That's what they'll work on over the next two weeks, but they've also got to deal with other hard things. You might remember that before the Christmas holiday, Senate negotiators were trying to find a path forward on the first immigration reform since 1986, which is also a deal that has to do with Ukraine and Israel military aid. They've linked those things together.
There are a record number of migrants coming to the U.S. southern border, sometimes more than 10,000 a day, presenting themselves to border protection agents, requesting asylum, and basically everyone involved agrees that the status quo isn't working. Democrats want more money to process those claims. Republicans want to limit who's legally allowed to request asylum to stop the flow of people coming. And as though that weren't hard enough, like I said, they've linked it to military aid in Ukraine and Israel. It's going to be a feat to behold if they can get all of this done. I will keep an eye on it and, of course, keep you updated.
DETROW: All of those things major issues where there's no clear path forward - but on the central one, funding the federal government, there is at least a plan in place now.
MCDANIEL: Thank goodness.
DETROW: Eric McDaniel, thanks so much.
MCDANIEL: Thank you.
DETROW: We'll talk to you soon.
MCDANIEL: Bye.
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