Congressional leaders struck a government funding deal Wednesday on half a dozen annual spending bills alongside a stopgap that pushes two shutdown deadlines later into March, according to a senior leadership aide.
Top lawmakers closed out negotiations on the Agriculture-FDA, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA, Transportation-HUD, Interior-Environment and Commerce-Justice-Science bills, assigning all of those a deadline of March 8. Leaders hope to release text by this weekend and clear the spending bills next week, funding those agencies through September.
The rest of the fiscal 2024 measures, including more contentious bills that would fund the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, will get a new deadline of March 22.
Negotiating the second tranche of spending bills before that deadline will be the true test of whether House Speaker Mike Johnson and other congressional leaders can work together to fully fund the government, already five months into the fiscal year.
