Congressional leaders announce spending deal that would avert next government shutdown

Congressional leaders have at last reached agreement on the overall price tag of the next batch of government spending bills, lawmakers announced on Sunday — a major step toward averting a partial shutdown that is set to begin later this month.

The deal would set top-line spending for fiscal year 2024 at $1.59 trillion, the amount originally agreed to by President Joe Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during negotiations over the government's debt limit last year.

The framework proposes keeping in place the $886 billion agreed to for defense funding in the 2024 fiscal year while also maintaining the $704 billion in non-defense spending that Democrats insisted upon during the debt limit negotiations.

Agreeing on those figures allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to begin working on the text of individual spending bills — an ongoing point of contention on Capitol Hill, particularly among House Republicans, a faction of whom ousted McCarthy in October amid infighting over how to move forward on spending legislation.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was chosen to succeed McCarthy, confirmed the key details of the agreement in a letter to his colleagues on Sunday afternoon.

Johnson touted concessions Republicans secured in the deal, including an expedited $10 billion cut in funding to the IRS and a claw-back of about $6 billion in remaining COVID-19 relief funds.

Johnson, in his letter, conceded that the «final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like,» but he noted that the agreement would allow the funding process to move forward while allowing negotiators to «reprioritize funding within the topline towards conservative objectives.»

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