Speaker Johnson and Democratic leaders have reached an agreement on funding levels for the coming year, setting up a potential showdown between Republican leadership and its constantly dissatisfied right flank in the House. The government is due to shut down partially on January 19 if the negotiated funding levels cannot be passed before then. 

The total budget number reached was $1.59 trillion — the number agreed to by both Speaker McCarthy and the White House during the debt ceiling negotiations in May 2023. “That includes $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for nondefense,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a letter to his colleagues.

The topline number was born of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which raised the debt ceiling until 2025 and set forth a framework for making certain budget cuts, including to the Internal Revenue Service and some Covid-era emergency funding. Mr. Johnson, who voted for the FRA in June 2023, boasts that the budget framework represents “real savings” and “real reductions” — not “budget gimmicks.”

Congress’ two Democratic leaders — Senator Schumer and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries — also say the budget framework represents a win. “The framework agreement to proceed will enable the appropriators to address many of the major challenges America faces at home and abroad,” the two Brookynites write in a joint statement released Sunday. “It will also allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats.” 

The White House has already said that President Biden would sign the budget if Congress can pass it at the negotiated levels. 

“The bipartisan funding framework congressional leaders have reached moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities,” the president said in a statement. “It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring. It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.”

Mr. Johnson makes clear in his letter to his fellow Republicans that he knows conservatives may hate the agreement. “While these final spending levels will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like, this deal does provide us a path,” Mr. Johnson writes, to begin the process of working on a more conservative fiscal year 2024 budget. 

Democrats and more establishment Republicans have promised to cut out all “poison pills” that some conservative Republicans attempted to put in the original appropriations bills, including cuts to Amtrak, a ban on drag queen performances on military installations, and ending the Defense Department’s paid leave abortion policy.

One budget hawk who has consistently fought with GOP leadership on spending issues and processes, Congressman Chip Roy, said on X on Sunday that the topline number of $1.59 trillion is unacceptable.  

“Topline in spending is terrible and gives away the leverage,” he said. “We’ll wait to see if we get meaningful policy riders… but 1) the NDAA was not a good preview, and 2) as usual, we keep spending more money we don’t have.”