Another $1.7 trillion coming down the pipe:
The House voted Friday to pass a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill that would fund critical government operations across federal agencies and provide emergency aid for Ukraine and natural disaster relief. The bill will next go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
Government funding is currently set to expire late Friday evening – and lawmakers raced the clock to clear the measure before the deadline. The Senate passed the legislation on Thursday along with a bill to extend the deadline by one week, to December 30, to provide enough time for the yearlong bill to be formally processed and sent to Biden. The House approved the one-week extension on Friday ahead of the final vote on the broader spending bill.
Just in case you were in doubt, $1.7 trillion is a massive, massive, massive amount of money. It would take someone working under the federal minimum wage 234,482,758,621 hours to earn it. I dunno how many weeks of work that is but you probably can't get that in before retirement age.
And what's in this gargantuan bill, exactly?
The massive spending bill for fiscal year 2023, known on Capitol Hill as an omnibus, provides $772.5 billion for non-defense, domestic programs and $858 billion in defense funding. It includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies and roughly $40 billion to respond to natural disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and flooding.
Other key provisions in the bill include an overhaul of the 1887 Electoral Count Act aimed at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election – the first legislative response to the US Capitol insurrection and then-President Donald Trump's relentless pressure campaign to stay in power despite his 2020 loss.
Oh, that's a "key provision," huh?
Don't worry, though, our elected representatives definitely looked through it all:
The legislative text of the package, which runs more than 4,000 pages, was released in the middle of the night – at around 1:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday – leaving little time for rank-and-file lawmakers, and the public, to review its contents before it came up for a vote in both chambers.
