Senate and House leaders announced on Sunday that they had struck an overarching agreement on 2024 government funding, but it was not clear whether they would be able to cement the deal and pass it into law in time to avert a partial government shutdown in less than two weeks.
After weeks of negotiations and on the eve of Congress returning from its holiday break, top Senate and House members said they had agreed to set the total amount of spending at nearly $1.66 trillion, bringing funding in line with the deal struck last year between President Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy that met with vehement conservative opposition.
The agreement includes an increase in Pentagon spending to $886.3 billion and holds nondefense funding essentially flat at $772.7 billion, including $69 billion of added money agreed to through a handshake deal between Mr. McCarthy and the White House. That additional spending is offset by speeding up $10 billion in cuts to I.R.S. enforcement and clawing back $6 billion in unspent Covid dollars and other emergency funds. Officials said the agreement did not include an additional $14 billion sought by the Republican and Democratic appropriators in the Senate to beef up both domestic and military spending.
They said Congress would need to take a bipartisan approach to “avoid a costly and disruptive shutdown.”
In a letter to his colleagues, Speaker Mike Johnson emphasized the spending reductions that Republicans had secured, notably the extra $10 billion from the I.R.S., and said that the “result is real savings to American taxpayers and real reductions in the federal bureaucracy.”