The House and Senate Appropriations Committees recently advanced their FY2024 agriculture appropriations bills. The bills now await floor action in both chambers.
The House Appropriations Committee on June 14 approved its agriculture appropriations bill by a party-line 34-27 vote. The committee included numerous amendments offered by Committee Democrats to strip provisions from the bill, but all were voted down on party-line votes.
The bill provides $25.313 billion in total discretionary spending, $532 million – or 2.1 percent – below the FY2023 enacted level and $3.622 billion – or 12.5 percent – below President Biden’s budget request.
Bill text, before the adoption of amendments in the full committee, can be found here. The bill report, before adoption of amendments in the full committee, can be found here. The committee’s summary of the bill can be found here.
With the agriculture appropriations bill’s passage, the House has now moved six of its 12 individual bills through committee: Agriculture, Military Construction/VA, Homeland Security, Defense, Energy and Water, and Legislative Branch.
Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 22 voted unanimously (28-0) to advance its own FY2024 agriculture appropriations bill out of committee. No amendments were offered in the markup.
Bill text can be found here, and the bill report can be found here. The committee’s summary of the bill can be found here.
The Senate’s bill provides $25.993 billion in total discretionary spending, $148 million – or 0.57 percent – above the FY2023 enacted level and $2.942 billion – or 10.16 percent – below President Biden’s budget request.
With the bill’s passage, the Senate has now moved two of its 12 individual bills through committee: Agriculture and Military Construction/VA.
This is the first time in three years the Senate Appropriations Committee has held any markup of any individual funding bill.
Both chambers’ bills are meant to comply with the recently passed debt limit deal, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which set total allocations for spending that were then divided up by each appropriations subcommittee in order to put the spending bills together.
That deal also included a requirement for Congress to pass its appropriations bills and send a final version to the President before the end of calendar year 2023 or a one-percent sequester will automatically be triggered until Congress does finalize its bills.
