The House on Friday passed the $824.3 billion fiscal year 2024 defense appropriations legislation, part of a six-bill spending package, sending the measure to the Senate with just hours left before a partial government shutdown deadline.
The lower chamber voted 286-134 in favor of the $1.2 trillion spending package, with almost twice as many Democrats than Republicans supporting the measure.
“As the Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I am pleased that Republican leadership has finally decided to join Democrats in putting the country ahead of politics by passing a bipartisan Fiscal Year 2024 Defense Appropriations Act that funds our national security priorities,” Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) said in a statement.
Congressional appropriators early Thursday morning unveiled their final $824.3 billion fiscal year 2024 defense appropriations bill, which includes a compromise to fund six of the Pentagon’s multi-year munitions requests and over $200 million for the department’s new Replicator attritable drone initiative (Defense Daily, March 21).
The $824.3 defense spending bill, which arrives nearly six months into the fiscal year, represents a $27 billion topline increase over FY ‘23 that adheres to the one percent spending cap set by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act, while including a $3 billion increase to both the procurement and research and development requests for FY ‘24.
The legislation picked additional support from House Democrats, many of which had opposed a slew of conservative GOP-led policy riders in the lower chamber’s original version of the bill, including blocking funds for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and climate-related policies at DoD, that was removed from the final legislation.
“When the House took up the Republican version of this legislation last summer, I strongly objected to extreme social policy riders advanced by Republicans that had nothing to do with national defense. I successfully fought to remove all of these provisions, including one in particular that would have restricted women service members and their families from accessing the reproductive health care that all Americans deserve,” McCollum said.
Ultimately, 185 Democrats joined 101 Republicans in voting in for the appropriations package, while 112 members of the House GOP opposed the measure, with many conservatives having called for larger spending cuts.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted during floor remarks on Friday that 70 percent of the federal government is set to run out of funding if Congress does not pass the appropriations legislation before midnight.
“To my colleagues on both sides: let’s finish the job today. Let’s avoid even a weekend shutdown. Let’s finish the job of funding the government for the remainder of the fiscal year. There is no reason to delay. There is no reason to drag out this process. If Senators cooperate on a time agreement, if we prioritize working together – just as we did two weeks ago – I am optimistic we can succeed. But if individual Senators resort to partisanship and stonewalling and dithering, those individuals will almost guarantee that we shut down, and the process could drag into Saturday, Sunday, and possibly beyond,” Schumer said.