Congress Pushes to Enact Final CR as Trump Administration Delivers List of Funding Anomalies
Congress is facing a March 14 deadline for finalizing the fiscal year (FY) 2025 appropriations bill, which is when a continuing resolution (CR) expires. In recent days, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) directed appropriators to prepare a final stopgap spending bill to keep the federal government operating through the end of the fiscal year (September 30). The Trump Administration has delivered a list of “anomalies,” or changes, they would like to see in the final FY 2025 spending bill. This includes increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), veterans’ affairs, defense accounts, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
The President is scheduled to give his State of the Union Address before Congress on March 4 and, in the following weeks, release the Presidential Budget Request for FY 2026. Completion of the long-overdue FY 2025 bills would allow Congress to turn to the FY 2026 appropriations process without delay.
In other news, Congress continues to work on a budget reconciliation package aimed at extending the 2017 Trump tax breaks while making deep cuts elsewhere in the federal budget. The House and Senate each narrowly passed their own budget resolutions in recent weeks (see previous COSSA coverage). Notably, the House budget resolution includes increased funding for border security and defense as well as an extension of the Trump 2017 Tax Act, while looking to make $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years. The Senate budget resolution only includes increased funding for border security and defense, opting to take up the tax breaks separately. Reconciliation is a tool used by Congress to make sweeping changes to the federal budget. It can be a lengthy process due to the specific actions that are required to initiate the process. More on the budget reconciliation process is available here. Below is COSSA’s quick explainer of the process.
Stay tuned to COSSA’s continued coverage on the 119th Congress.