Biden signs $1.5 trillion spending bill with $14 Billion for Ukraine aid
After months of negotiations to fund the government, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill that will shore up funding for the rest of the fiscal year, while also doling out cash for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, additional student aid, cybersecurity and more.
KEY FACTS
President Joe Biden signed the massive spending package, which passed the House and Senate last week in largely bipartisan votes, on Tuesday afternoon, appropriating funds for the government until September 30.
Headlining the 2,741-page bill, about $782 billion is allocated for military spending under the Defense Department, while an additional $125 billion has been allocated to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In addition to funding day-to-day government operations, the bill appropriates about $13.6 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion, with $4 billion to help displaced refugees, $6.5 billion for military assistance and $1.8 billion for any macroeconomic needs, according to the House Committee on Appropriations.
Among other provisions are the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which expired in 1994 and provided funds to help prosecute violent crimes against women; a measure to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over synthetic nicotine; and cybersecurity protections to help curb the risk of infrastructure attacks.
It also grants agency requests for a number of new provisions, including a $400 increase to the maximum Pell Grant award, and nearly $7 billion to establish an agency under the National Institutes of Health tasked with building “high-risk, high-reward” technologies for disease research.
What didn’t make the cut? About $16 billion for Covid relief, including tests, vaccines and treatments, was stripped from the bill following last-minute disagreements over how to fund the provision—a move House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called “heartbreaking” on Wednesday as she pledged “to fight for urgently needed Covid assistance” in separate legislation slated for a vote as early as next week.
Congress failed to pass a budget for the fiscal year by the end of last September, forcing lawmakers to pass a series of temporary measures to avoid a government shutdown. An omnibus combined with a Covid relief package was signed into law in late December 2020 and set current funding levels for most federal programs, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The latest continuing resolutions were enacted in mid-February to fund the government until mid-March, while lawmakers hammered out disagreements, and again last Thursday to buy time for the bill to make it to Biden’s desk.
“The bipartisan funding bill proves once more that members of both parties can come together to deliver results for the American people,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement late Thursday night. “It will reduce costs for families and businesses, support our economic recovery, and advance American leadership abroad.”
