House passes $1.5T government funding bill plus Ukraine aid after chaotic day

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The House passed a $1.5 trillion government funding bill Wednesday night, setting the first new spending levels under the Biden administration, providing $13.6 billion in measures to support Ukraine, and marking the end of months of bipartisan budget negotiations.

Separately, the House passed a short-term stopgap measure that funds the government at current levels after the Friday deadline through March 15. That gives the Senate more time to consider and act on the omnibus funding measure.


Passage came after a long and chaotic day of delays and last-minute snags. A measure to authorize $15.6 billion in additional coronavirus aid was separated from the omnibus and turned into its own bill, which is expected to be acted on next week and faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS STRIP COVID-19 AID FROM SPENDING BILL AMID INTRAPARTY DISPUTES

Text of the omnibus was released in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and Democratic leaders had planned to move quickly on the measure later in the day. It hit hours of delays after liberal Democrats objected to funding for additional COVID-19-related aid being offset by eliminating unused appropriations to states and localities that they were still expecting.

While the House had previously passed some budget frameworks, the overall budget bill had been under negotiation for months, causing frustration in the scramble to address the fix — which also delayed the start of House Democrats’ annual issues conference in Philadelphia, which was set to begin Wednesday night.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi bristled at being challenged over the messy “legislative sausage-making process.”

“Let’s grow up about this, OK?” Pelosi said in a press conference. “We’re in a legislative process. We have a deadline for keeping the government open. We have a lively negotiation — it has to be bipartisan.”

The omnibus bill, funding every part of the government, includes a 6.7% increase in nondefense spending to $730 billion, the largest in four years, according to the House Appropriations Committee. It also includes an increase in defense spending, a key Republican priority, by 5.6% to $42 billion.

Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus railed against aid for Ukraine being tied to the overall funding bill.

“What we are doing right now is absolutely insane. We should be having a separate full debate on the Ukraine funding because we all care about that,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, said in a press call. “But I refuse to allow my constituents, the people in Texas, or my colleagues in this body to be held hostage by a swampy establishment that doesn’t give a rat’s rear end about transparency and truth and trying to have an actual debate.”

The Ukraine aid portion provides $4 billion to address the needs of refugees and those who have fled Ukraine; defense assistance, including through the transfer of defense equipment and building Ukraine’s capacity to deter Russian aggression; money set aside for economic assistance; $25 million to combat “disinformation”; and $120 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development to support local activists and independent media, among other initiatives.

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The supplemental coronavirus aid bill includes $9.85 billion for vaccine and treatment procurement, $750 million for countering future variants, and $4.45 billion for global health initiatives, among other measures.

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