The Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday approved the FY2022 Agriculture Appropriations bill by a 25-5 vote.

The bill includes $25.9 billion in total spending, a $2.46 billion increase over FY2021. For reference, the House FY2022 Agriculture Appropriations bill included discretionary spending of $26.55 billion, an increase of $2.851 billion above FY2021 enacted levels.

The bill text can be found here. Committee report language can be found here.

The committee also passed two other funding bills, including appropriations for Energy, Water, Military Construction, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Those bills now head to the Senate floor. Like the House, the Senate may opt to include multiple appropriations bills into a “minibus” and pass them together. No vote has been scheduled on the Senate floor for individual appropriations bills or a package.

In addition to appropriations bills, Congress must also address the debt ceiling, which expired on July 31, 2021. Congress and the White House in 2019 agreed to a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling, which was set at $22 trillion and took effect as of last week. An additional $6.5 trillion has been borrowed since that deal was struck. That puts the total U.S. debt subject to the ceiling at $28.58 trillion. In FY2021, the U.S. is running a roughly $3.1 billion budget deficit. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday set up a cloture vote to proceed with passage of a $550 billion physical infrastructure spending bill – which is set to incur about $100 billion in additional spending each year for five years. There is discussion of a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill focused on social spending, as well as annual appropriations totaling nearly $1.5 trillion in just FY2021 alone.

The Treasury Department has stated this spring that it would use extraordinary measures to avoid defaulting when the ceiling takes effect. With COVID-19-related uncertainty regarding Congressional action that could affect the Treasury’s cash flows, such as tax credits, fiscal spending, and monetary easing, the exact date at which the Treasury Department could no longer meet its debt obligations is not known.