Congress Gets A Big Pay Day
This is a big development.
In move that has shocked America, the House has just passed the massive $1.7 trillion omnibus package finishing off a week filled with a lot of drama which could have resulted in a government lock down.
According to The Hill, the bill appears to have passed along party lines with the final vote coming out to 225-201-1. This vote comes just one day after the Senate approved the bill in a bipartisan vote. The omnibus package will now head straight to President Biden’s desk to be signed and officially approved.
The new bill sets aside $772.5 billion in nondefense discretionary spending and another $858 billion in defense funding.
The controversial bill will also set aside another $40 billion for Ukraine to help their war efforts against Russia and Vladimir Putin. The bill also sets aside $38 billion in emergency disaster assistance.
The bill also enforces a new ban on popular Chinese app TikTok for all federal government phones which both parties raised concerns about in the past.
Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urged members of his own party in the House to vote against the bill however it still passed since Democrats currently have control until January.
While the Democrats did pass the bill in the House they pointed out a number of times that they wanted more funding for the nondefense spending portion of the bill however that did not happen.
Additionally, $47.5 billion will go to the National Institutes of Health and another $9.2 billion will go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell celebrated the funding to the defense budget and said, “the world’s greatest military will get the funding increase that it needs, outpacing inflation.”
“Meanwhile, nondefense, nonveterans spending will come in below the rate of inflation, for a real-dollar cut,” McConnell added.
Former President Donald Trump on the other hand has called the newly $1.7 trillion omnibus package a “disaster.” He went on to call the bill a “ludicrous, unacceptable $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill”
Kevin McCarthy also trashed the bill and said “buried in the omnibus is even more money for woke-ism in the government and the military” and funding for “left-wing pet projects.”
