The U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate recently reached an agreement on the Continuing Appropriations Resolution of 2014 (H J Res 59), providing an increase of approximately $22 billion in non-defense discretionary spending for fiscal year (FY) 2014 and $9 billion in FY 2015. The House passed the bill on December 12 by a vote of 332-94, and the Senate passed it on December 18 by a vote of 64-36. The measure sets top-line spending for fiscal 2014 at $1.012 trillion, and $1.014 trillion in fiscal 2015.
While an overall spending number is authorized, the bill does not appropriate funds. So, in order to avoid another government shutdown, Congress will have to act on individual spending bills, pass an omnibus spending bill to cover the appropriations bills that are not passed, or pass another short-term continuing resolution (CR) before January 15, 2014, when the current CR runs out. Since the agreement was reached, Senate Appropriations subcommittee chairmen have been given the spending limits for their individual subcommittees, providing them the numbers they will use to write the bills that could form a fiscal 2014 omnibus.
Appropriators did not disclose their specific allocations but new figures are expected to be lower than their previous fiscal 2014 top lines. That’s because Senate Democrats wrote their bills to a top line of $1.058 trillion, $46 billion more than the discretionary caps set under last week’s House-Senate budget agreement.
NH&RA will
report on how housing programs will fare in the appropriations process as we learn more about HUD allocation numbers.
