Late last week and over the weekend, Congress worked to reach a final agreement on the remaining Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 appropriations bills. On Friday, December 16th, the House approved a “megabus” spending package (H.R. 2055, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012) that included nine of the twelve annual spending bills. The Senate cleared the same package on Saturday, December 17th, sending the final appropriations bill of the year to President Obama for his signature. He is expected to sign the bill this week.
Both chambers, along with the President, also approved a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that extends federal funding through Friday, December 23rd. The previous CR was set to expire last Friday and additional time was needed for final processing of the bill.
The megabus appropriations bill includes a combined total of $915 billion for the Military Construction-VA, Defense, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Labor-HHS-Education, Legislative Branch, and State-Foreign Operations appropriations bills. When combined with the three-bill minibus appropriations package passed in November, the megabus package sets FY 2012 spending at the maximum level allowable under the $1.043 trillion discretionary spending cap established by the debt ceiling deal.
In addition to the FY 2012 spending provided in the bill, Congress also approved $8.1 billion in disaster relief that provides funding for FEMA and the Corps of Engineers to help disaster-impacted communities.
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