The Senate late on June 1 voted to approve the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which would increase the national debt limit through early 2025 and avoid the government hitting its borrowing limit early next week.
The legislation received healthy bipartisan support in the Senate’s 63-36 vote to approve. Earlier this week, the House approved the legislation by a vote of 314 to 117.
President Biden was expected to sign the measure into law later on Friday.
“No one gets everything they want in a negotiation, but make no mistake: this bipartisan agreement is a big win for our economy and the American people,” President Biden said in a statement following Thursday night’s Senate vote.
The legislation will tamp down budgets for Federal civilian agencies for the next two years. The bill will cap Federal non-defense discretionary spending in fiscal year 2024 close to FY2023 levels, while limiting non-defense spending increases to one percent in FY2025.
Defense spending will be permitted to increase by 3.3 percent in FY2024, to $866 billion, including national security programs operated by the Department of Energy.
On the civilian agency front, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will lose $20 billion from a ten-year $80 billion funding boost that the agency received IRS last year to pursue modernization of the agency’s operations – including IT functions.
Finally, the bill will claw back on funding remaining for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) received through the 2021 American Rescue Plan, and the General Services Administration’s Federal Citizen Services Fund received through the 2020 CARES Act. The dollar amount of those clawbacks is unclear, but is not thought to be substantial.
