President Joe Biden (R) on Sunday signed legislation that would cut much non-defense federal spending over the next two fiscal years in exchange for extending U.S. borrowing authority.
The Senate passed the bill on Thursday, averting a U.S. default on its debt payments. Biden negotiated the terms of the deal with the Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The Senate approved the bill 63-36 with one abstention. Seventeen Senate Republicans joined 46 Democrats to send the bill to the White House.
For fiscal year 2024, the “Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023” would cap defense discretionary spending roughly at Biden’s requested level of about $886 billion. That category includes the Department of Energy’s defense nuclear programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Office of Environmental Management.
On the other hand, the bill would limit discretionary spending, the broad budget category that includes civilian nuclear energy programs at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to just under $704 billion for fiscal year 2024: about $137 billion less than the White House requested.
The compromise bill does leave intact a zero-emission nuclear power production credit passed into law in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. In their own deficit bill, which passed the House May 4 without Democratic help, House Republicans proposed repealing the credit.
Ultimately, the House easily passed the deficit compromise on a wide bipartisan vote of 314-117. Among House Republicans, 149 supported the bill and 71 opposed it. Among House Democrats 165 voted for the bill while 46 voted against it.
The bill extends U.S. borrowing authority beyond the next presidential election, in 2024.
Editor’s note, June 04, 2023, 8:24 p.m. Eastern time. The story was updated to show that the bill became law.
