The Senate announced on February 7th that a deal had been reached on raising the spending caps set forth under the Budget Control Act of 2011 (PL 112-25) – without an agreement, the law would reduce spending to $549 billion for defense and $516 billion for nondefense. Under the bi-partisan deal, those caps would be increased in FY 18 by $63 billion for non-defense domestic spending and $80 billion for defense spending. The increases would be $68 billion and $85 billion, for domestic and defense, respectively, for FY 19. A short-term CR is likely needed to allow the Appropriations Committees to work out the final FY18 funding bills with the new spending caps.
Assuming the Senate passes the measure, it would still need to be approved by the House of Representatives, where Democratic votes will likely be necessary given concerns from conservative fiscal hawks concerned with increased spending as well as issues around raising the debt ceiling.
After extensive advocacy efforts by NH&RA members and others in the industry we were initially hopeful that the agreement would contain language from the Cantwell-Hatch bill to improve the LIHTC; unfortunately, these provisions were ultimately stripped out of the final compromise. We are hopeful that there will be another opportunity to incorporate LIHTC improvements to another legislative vehicle later this year.
