The new omnibus spending bill is likely to pass:
The lack of dramatic, controversial changes are likely to help smooth the way for the omnibus, which the House and the Senate are expected to take up this week. Outside conservative groups are already railing against the spending bill, but the reaction on the Hill has been more muted as many Republicans are eager to avoid a replay of October’s shutdown. “We’re not going to stop the process mid-year,” GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions, who voted against the December budget deal, told the National Journal. Democratic leaders and the White House are lining up behind the agreement.
If the omnibus passes without event this week, legislators and Hill-watchers alike will herald Congress for a return to normalcy. It will certainly be a departure from how members have operated for the past three years, lurching from one manufactured fiscal crisis to the next as they insisted on coming to a long-term deficit reduction deal that never actually happened.
Plumer breaks down the bill. Among the highlights:
Defense: 0.2 percent increase. Military spending basically gets kept at the same levels as last year, once you factor in the effects of the sequestration. And it’s about $29 billion less than the Pentagon wanted. The budget includes $486.9 billion for the Pentagon’s base budget and another $85.2 billion for operations overseas this year. The overseas budget is declining only slightly even as the war in Afghanistan winds down. Another highlight: There’s a 1 percent increase in pay for military personnel.
Benen flags other details:
A few things that jumped out at me:
* As ridiculous as this may sound, a Republican rider survived that would continue the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs.
* The school voucher program for the District of Columbia will continue.
* Efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act predictably failed, but at Republicans’ insistence, the package cuts $1 billion from the Prevention and Public Health (PPH) fund.
* The spending bill reverses some of the cuts to retirement pay for medically retired veterans and survivor benefits.
* Detainees still can’t be transferred from Guantanamo Bay to detention facilities on U.S. soil.
Drum expects little effect from the rider that cuts off funding for enforcing the new light bulb efficiency standards:
On the one hand, the lighting industry has completed the transition to newer, more efficient bulbs and has no interest in going back. What’s more, these newer bulbs provide just about all the options anyone could ask for. … At this point, suspending enforcement is mostly a symbolic gesture to please the tea party base of the GOP. It will have a modest effect, but for the most part the market has moved on.
The IRS is also getting its funds cut:
According to the House Appropriations Committee, the funding level would be lower than agency spending in 2009. The agreement would also require the IRS to spend more time and energy reporting to Congress on a range of activities. And, to the surprise of no one, it prohibits the use of any funds to single out groups based on their ideological beliefs or “to target citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Those restrictions, of course, explain what this budget is really about: More political payback for the IRS’s bungled efforts to sort out which non-profits qualify for 501(c)(4) designation.
Bloomberg’s editorial rails against other cuts:
Lawmakers unwisely denied funding increases to financial regulatory agencies, which need more resources to finish and enforce the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. This stinginess is what Wall Street wanted, of course. But it won’t protect the financial industry from regulation; it will only make the process more frustrating. Under the 2014 spending agreement, the Securities and Exchange Commission will get $1.35 billion, which is $324 million below President Barack Obama’s budget request. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees commodities and futures transactions worth $400 trillion in notional value – – up from $40 trillion before Dodd-Frank — gets a mere $215 million, or $100 million less than what the president sought.
This isn’t fiscal prudence. Both agencies return money to the U.S. Treasury in the form of fines and penalties in excess of what they spend. Presumably, better funding would result in more proficient enforcement and even fatter returns to taxpayers. And the penny-pinching can’t stop the agencies from implementing Dodd-Frank. The 2010 law offers no leeway on whether to regulate. Tight budgets just mean the work must be done by fewer staff, making it harder for industry representatives to get appointments to discuss the rules or enforcement cases.
Josh Green’s bottom line:
What’s remarkable is how something as unremarkable as this omnibus bill can pass through Congress (probably) without the headache-inducing, economy-damaging drama of maximal opposition that has accompanied nearly every piece of significant legislation in the past few years.
The Dish 