WASHINGTON — Lawmakers reached agreement Monday on three spending bills that would provide about $147.5 billion next year for the departments of Veterans Affairs and Energy, Army Corps of Engineers and lawmakers’ offices and the Capitol complex.
The package came together after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations and at times tense conversations about funding levels and policy language. Aides said it was on track to reach President Donald Trump’s desk by week’s end. The tentative plan at this stage is for the Senate to go first, likely on Thursday, with the House to follow on Friday, although Hurricane Florence remains a wild card.
The toplines for the three-bill conference report reflect the hard-fought bipartisan deal eliminating austere spending caps for fiscal 2019, the second leg of the two-year budget agreement reached in February. The Military Construction-VA title, the largest of the troika, would provide $98.1 billion overall, including $921 million designated as war-related spending outside of the regular caps, or a 5.8 percent boost over the current year. Energy-Water programs would receive $44.6 billion, a 3.2 percent increase; while the Legislative Branch measure is funded at $4.8 billion, a 2.1 percent increase.
Getting three of the 12 annual spending bills signed into law before the new fiscal year begins will be a milestone that Congress hasn’t reached since fiscal 2009. But lawmakers want to possibly get as many as nine of the bills enacted before the end of the month. If they can accomplish that, it’ll be the first time since fiscal 1997 that more than four bills became law before the end of September.
