Yesterday, the House voted 329 to 91 to approve a stopgap spending package (H.J. Res. 117) that would keep federal agencies funded for the first six months of fiscal year 2013. The Senate is expected to approve the package next week, and the President has indicated he will sign it. This continuing resolution would fund the federal government through March 27, 2013 at a total cost of $1.047 trillion, the amount agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The overall funding levels for the first six months of FY 2013 will be slightly (0.612 percent for most accounts) above FY 2012 in absolute dollars, although not enough to keep pace with inflation.
Yesterday, the House voted 329 to 91 to approve a stopgap spending package (H.J. Res. 117) that would keep federal agencies funded for the first six months of fiscal year 2013. The Senate is expected to approve the package next week, and the President has indicated he will sign it.
This continuing resolution would fund the federal government through March 27, 2013 at a total cost of $1.047 trillion, the amount agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. The overall funding levels for the first six months of FY 2013 will be slightly (0.612 percent for most accounts) above FY 2012 in absolute dollars, although not enough to keep pace with inflation.
Given what’s been going on in Congress this year, this counts as pretty good news. Congress has averted a government shutdown and avoided having to argue over short-term spending in the upcoming lame-duck session after the November election. But by passing this temporary measure instead of the annual appropriations bills that separately fund discretionary programs, Congress has punted a lot of spending decisions into next year.
And programs vital to women and families are still under the threat of across-the-board cuts beginning in January, unless Congress acts to avert the sequester scheduled to take effect January 2, 2013.
In our recent Roadmap to the Upcoming Federal Budget Debates, we explained that automatic, across-the-board spending cuts –known as “the sequester” – are scheduled to start taking effect the first of next year. The Budget Control Act of 2011 established the sequester as a way to enforce about $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years. In fiscal year 2013 alone, $109.3 billion would be cut from the federal budget, divided equally between defense and non-defense programs.
Also yesterday, by a vote of 223 to 196, the House passed H.R. 6365, the “National Security and Job Protection Act”, requiring the President to provide Congress with a plan to replace the upcoming defense cuts with cuts to other programs. President Obama’s budget already includes a plan that would reduce the deficit by more than the sequester would over the next ten years while protecting key programs, in part by raising revenues from those with the greatest ability to pay. But that’s not an approach H.R. 6365 would allow; it precludes the President from including any revenue measures in his sequester replacement plan.
H.R. 6365 would do nothing to prevent sequester cuts to discretionary programs women and their families depend on, such as Head Start, child care, and women’s health services. As a way to avert the sequester cuts to the Pentagon budget, H.R. 6365 approvingly cites two plans -- the House Budget Resolution (H. Con. Res. 112) and the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2112 (H.R. 5262) -- that make deep cuts to core safety net programs such as Medicaid and SNAP/Food Stamps. None of these bills ask millionaires or corporations to contribute a penny toward deficit reduction.
House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) moved to replace the sequester for 2013 – for both defense and nondefense programs -- with a plan that would avoid the need for these spending cuts by raising $46.7 billion from a higher minimum tax rate for people earning more than $1 million a year, $26.5 billion from ending certain farm subsidies, and $38.2 from eliminating tax breaks for oil companies. His motion was voted down, 170 to 247.
Programs critically important to women and their families have already been cut by the Budget Control Act, and the sequester will cut them further in the name of deficit reduction. Yet a majority of the House continues to insist that not a single tax loophole can be closed to help reduce the deficit.