Congress Reaches Continuing Resolution Consensus, Raising Christmas Renegotiation

On Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, the House and Senate passed the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (H.R. 9747), or the three-month continuing resolution (CR) until Dec. 20, 2024. The CR was adopted by a vote of 341-82 in the House and 78-18 in the Senate. We expect President Biden to sign the legislation well in advance of the Sept. 30, 2024, deadline. Congress is now set to recess until mid-November.

What the CR Does and Does Not Do:

The CR is largely a clean extension of fiscal year (FY) 2024 funding, with a few “exceptions and modifications for technical budgetary issues and certain extensions and authorities,” including increasing funding for the Secret Service by $231 million, in the wake of the July 13 and Sept. 15 assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump. The CR also includes $119 million for the presidential inauguration and transition.

Unlike the six-month CR the House first introduced, the adopted CR does not include an additional $10 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief funding, but it does allow the agency to expedite funds available for response and recovery activities. The CR does not include disaster relief funding for the Small Business Administration (SBA) or additional funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Congress advanced and President Biden signed into law a $3 billion funding measure (H.R. 9468) to temporarily address the VA’s budget shortfall on Sept. 20.

Expectations for the Lame Duck Session:

Congress has 24 legislative days before the expiration of the CR when both chambers return in mid-November. In the last two lame duck sessions (2020 and 2022), Congress completed action on all 12 appropriations bills for FY 2021 and FY 2023. Congress passed three CRs earlier this year before passing all 12 FY24 appropriations bills in March 2024. Speaker Johnson remarked this week that there will not be a Christmas omnibus: “We’ve worked very hard to break the Christmas omnibus tradition since I became Speaker, and we will not return to it.” There are numerous possibilities for what is to come in the lame duck and much hinges on the outcome of the election. It is possible that Congress could pass a series of minibuses and/or another CR.

As a reminder, the House passed four out of the 12 appropriations bills while the Senate has not passed a single appropriations bill. The House and Senate appropriations bills that were adopted out of committee adhere to the topline allocation set forth by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of $1.606 trillion ($895.212 billion for defense; $710.688 billion for nondefense); however, the House did not include any side deals in its topline funding allocation, whereas the Senate provided additional emergency funding. Specifically, the Senate reached a bipartisan agreement to provide an additional $13.5 billion in emergency funding for nondefense programs, and $21 billion for defense programs beyond the FRA levels. We expect a bicameral agreement on topline totals to take up a significant amount of time during the lame duck.

Brownstein is in a unique position to help those interested in learning more and engaging in the government funding process. For more information, please contact a member of the Brownstein team.

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