Over
the weekend, the U.S. Senate passed HJ Res 117, the six-month
continuing resolution (CR) that the House passed the week before . The
bill now heads to President Obama who is expected to sign it. Passage
of the CR removes the threat of a government shutdown by funding
government operations through March 27, 2013.
The bill provides funding at a level consistent with the Fiscal Year 2013 spending cap included in the
Budget Control Act (BCA).
This represents an $8 billion increase in funding over the previous
fiscal year. Some of the $8 billion will be set aside for emergency
spending, but the majority of it will be distributed among all accounts
via a 0.62% across-the-board increase in funding for programs. Though
the CR ensures that the federal government will continue to be funded in
the near-term, it does not address the
sequestration cuts which are still scheduled to go into effect in January.
Congressional
passage of the CR is considered a victory for the Senate, who had
identified the BCA cap as its target all along. The House earlier this
year passed a
budget
that cut funding by about $19 billion below the BCA cap. However,
given Senate resistance to the House-passed budget and House leaders'
uneasiness over the political fallout of another protracted budget
battle, the House relented and decided to accept the BCA caps as the
target for the next six months. Whichever party controls Congress and
the White House after the November elections will have an opportunity to
reopen this debate next March when dealing with the remaining six
months of the fiscal year.
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