Thursday, December 19, 2019: Budget Passed, Friday, December 20, President Trump Signed Both Bills Avoiding Government Shutdown
The Senate passed two discretionary spending bills on Thursday that provided $1.4 trillion to fund the U.S. government for the federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 which began October 1, 2019, and will go through the end of September 2020.
The President then signed both bills on Friday, as had been expected, and avoided a shutdown of the federal Government, which would have started last Saturday at midnight had the budget deal not gelled. The House of Representatives had earlier voted its approval of both spending Bills on Tuesday of this week and passed them on to the Senate for its review and quick vote.
Dubbed “The Happy Holidays Budget” since Democrats, Republicans and the White House all got everything they wanted (The White House got $1.4 billion to continue to build “The Wall” on our border with Mexico and expanded military spending, including on the new Space Force program readying the U.S. for war in Space), it was a deal locked and loaded from negotiations which ended last Tuesday and concluded on Friday with the President’s signing of both bills.
The total federal budget is actually much larger for FY 2020 (over $4.7 trillion). Federal government spending falls into three general categories: Mandatory spending for mandated benefits such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (about $2.84 trillion); Discretionary spending (a little over $1.4 trillion) and interest on the national debt (currently about $479 billion per year in interest on what is currently $22 trillion of federal debt).
NOTE: The federal government has estimated its FY 2020 revenues will be about $3.645 trillion while it expects to spend $4.746 trillion. So, the FY 2020 deficit is expected to be about $1.1 trillion. The two budget bills the President signed Friday were to set the budgets of the federal agencies and fund them (including the Department of Defense and all of the civilian federal agencies) from October 1, 2019, to and through September 30, 2020. While federal revenues in 2020 are expected to be at a record high, military spending and discretionary spending have also increased faster than revenue growth. The expected $1.1 trillion deficit is not the highest on record, but is the highest since 2012 when the federal government was spending heavily to pull the economy out of the 2008-2011 deep recession which followed the collapse of the home mortgage lending market.
OFCCP: The Bill, H.R. 1865, allows for necessary expenses for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, $105,976,000. OFCCP’s budget has been flat (at $103,476,000) for each of the last two years which were governed by “Continuing Budget Resolutions” when the Congress and the President could not agree upon a budget (and the prior year’s budget was thus installed by default as a matter of budget practice). In a pleasant surprise last week for OFCCP, the Congress and the President INCREASED OFCCP’s budget for FY 2020 from the mere $100,000 increase the agency had cautiously sought back in March 2019 to now add $2.5 Million to OFCCP’s prior year’s budget and peg its FY 2020 spending at $105,976,000 (about a 2.4% budget increase). There will be much celebrating at OFCCP as it ends another difficult year for the agency with a small endorsement from its boss. That extra $2.5M will ensure that OFCCP’s on-roll headcount can remain at a minimum of 500 employees, and the agency could add as many as 25 more Compliance Officers if it wished to spend its funds on more staff.
Here’s the debate history for the $105,976,000 budget the President just signed for OFCCP:
- February 2019: White House sought $91.1 million for OFCCP
- March 2019: In defiance of The White House, OFCCP requested $103,576,000 million ($100k more than its budget the prior two years)
- April 2019: House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, Education and Related Agencies proposed a whopping $120 million budget for OFCCP in FY 2020.
- June 2019: House approved “the Whopper” $120 million Committee proposal.
- December 2019: The Senate then downsized the Whopper House proposal and sent the $105,976,000 budget proposal to the President, which President Trump then signed.
EEOC: A separate Bill, H.R. 1158, budgeted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at $389.5 million ($10M more than its prior year’s budget = about a 2.6% budget increase). President Trump signed the $389.5 million budget for the EEOC on Friday, giving it a bit of financial breathing room in the coming calendar year and avoiding a shrinking headcount. The President’s budget blueprint from March 2019 had pegged the agency at a mere $355.8 million, a $25 million budget deflation from the prior two years. The EEOC had received $379.5 million in funding for FY2019 after President Trump initially requested only $363.8 million. The EEOC, like the OFCCP, had been under a Continuing Budget Resolution in 2019 and thus had received a budget of $379.5M in FY2018 which had carried over into FY 2019.