The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday passed its second batch of government funding legislation, clearing seven of the 12 full-year spending bills for fiscal 2025 overall.
The four funding bills advanced with bipartisan support, although both sides went back and forth throughout a Thursday session over a series of issues ranging from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to relief for Palestinian refugees.
The bills call for more than $200 billion in funding for the departments of Justice (DOJ), Commerce, Transportation (DOT), Interior, State, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The powerful funding committee cleared its first batch of funding bills earlier this month, spanning hundreds of billions of dollars for the departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and the legislative branch, which also covers operations in the House and Senate.
The annual DOJ funding bill, one of the largest of the bunch considered on Thursday, calls for more than $70 billion in discretionary funding, up $5.2 billion from current levels, according to a bill summary. The bill also covers funding for the Commerce Department and science agencies, boosts for the National Science Foundation, climate research and construction of weather satellites at NOAA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Office on Violence Against Women.
The bill advanced out of committee in a 26-3 vote, with Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) joining two Republicans in voting no, while expressing concerns with NOAA’s proposed vessel speed rules.
“In 2022, NOAA proposed a rule that would require small recreational boats between 35 and 65 feet in length to travel at speeds below 10 knots for up to seven months of [the] year,” he said of the measure. “NOAA claims that this is the only thing that will protect the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.”
“Let me be clear, this rule would absolutely devastate the entire recreational boating and fishing industry,” he said. “It will force vessel operators to navigate choppy waters at dangerously low speeds and it would economically be disastrous for the communities that depend on ocean tourism. It is ill conceived and overreaching.”
Senators also debated an amendment proposed by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), which the senator argued sought to “prohibit the law enforcement funding provided by this committee from being defunded without our committee’s approval.”
“In fiscal year 2023, more than $11 million in funds provided by this committee for law enforcement were diverted to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of the Republican presidential candidates,” he said. Republicans have vigorously criticized Smith’s prosecution of former President Trump.
Senators also had a lengthy debate around the United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, as the committee considered the annual State Department funding bill. The issue was also a sticking point earlier this year when both sides negotiated fiscal 2024 funding.
The fiscal 2025 version of the bill, which additionally covers dollars for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), calls for more than $60 billion in funding, with increases for the State Department and USAID Operations.
The committee approved more than $98 billion in fiscal 2025 discretionary funding for the annual HUD and DOT funding bill, while increasing funding for the Maritime Administration, homeless assistance grants and tenant-based Section 8 vouchers.
Tribal programs and schools and the Indian Health Service see funding boosts in the fiscal 2025 Interior funding bill, which calls for more than $44 billion in funding, with Democrats also highlighting increases for EPA programs and other offices.
The bills are a stark contrast from the funding plans being crafted in the GOP-led House, where Republicans on Wednesday passed a spending bill proposing a 20 percent cut to EPA funding, along with other policy riders that Democrats have called “poison pills.”
There’s also a funding gap between the bills being moved in both chambers, as House Democrats accuse Republicans of shortchanging nondefense programs in their bills, while Senate negotiators say they’ve struck a bipartisan deal to increase funding in their measures beyond budget caps agreed to last year.
Congress currently has until late September, when fiscal 2025 is set to start, to fund the government, and members on both sides acknowledge a stopgap measure will be needed to prevent a shutdown as lawmakers fall behind in their annual funding work.
The House has only passed five of its annual funding bills across the floor, and the full Senate has yet to pass any.
Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.), an appropriator and top Republican on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, also shared concerns of funding shortfalls lawmakers could have to address sooner rather than later.
“We recently learned from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and from [the Office of Management and Budget], a mandatory funding shortfall of approximately $3 billion in the compensation and pension and readjustment benefits accounts for fiscal year ‘24 and a discretionary funding shortfall of approximately $12 billion in its medical care accounts for fiscal year ‘25,” he said, while knocking both offices for coming forward with the information only after senators advanced legislation this month to fund the VA for fiscal 2025.
“The VA claims now that 7 million veterans and survivors are at risk of not receiving their benefit payments on [Oct. 1], a date in which there’s very few days in which we will be here between now and then, if Congress does not act before [Sept. 20],” he said.
In a statement responding to Moran’s comments on Thursday, VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said the agency is “delivering more care and more benefits to more Veterans than ever before” in a “large part to the historic PACT Act.”
“These results are life-changing for Veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors, and VA will continue to push to make sure that they get the care and benefits they deserve,” Hayes told The Hill, while pointing to increases in enrollment to VA health care, jumps in claims applications, and other factors.
“These important results for Veterans and survivors exceeded even the most aggressive projections and expectations. Because of that, VA needs Congress to provide $2.883 billion in mandatory benefits funds for fiscal year 2024 and $11.971 in fiscal year 2025 for medical care.”
The Hill has reached out to the Office of Management and Budget for comment.