Lawmakers attempting to finish fiscal 2024 appropriations early next year face a new reality laid bare by nonpartisan budget scorekeepers in recent months: automatic cuts in last spring’s debt limit law intended to force final agreement that would disproportionately hit nondefense programs.
It’s the opposite of what most observers expected at the time the deal was inked, when defense was thought to be the bigger victim of a failure to complete this year’s work. The new Congressional Budget Office numbers flip the law’s incentive structure on its head, potentially giving House GOP hard-liners some leverage in the upcoming “topline” negotiations over final appropriations.
Freedom Caucus and aligned members haven’t had any luck unifying their conference around deep cuts to the regular spending caps that President Joe Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., negotiated as part of the debt limit law.
