The U.S. Congress faces multiple spending battles leading up to the fall. To help you understand what is going on and what we expect to happen in the future, our highly-experienced Kiplinger Letter team will keep you abreast of the latest developments and forecasts (Get a free issue of The Kiplinger Letter or subscribe). You'll get all the latest news first by subscribing, but we will publish many (but not all) of the forecasts a few days afterward online. Here’s the latest...
Congress must pass all 12 annual appropriations bills, which lawmakers have not done since the 1990s, to avoid an automatic 1% cut to discretionary spending. Should this happen, how the cuts are implemented will be up to House and Senate appropriators, who will then need to compete for a smaller pool of money. Figure on especially intense fights over funding for the Department of Justice, the FBI, the IRS, and Customs and Border Protection.
