Ending almost eight days of limited debate on a bill that funds federal government operations through the end of the fiscal year, the Senate on Wednesday approved a nearly $1 trillion budget bill for Uncle Sam, even as the Congress started work on next year's budget outline.
With House approval of the package on Thursday, Congress will finally wrap up work on the 2013 budget, nearly six months after the fiscal year began back on October 1, 2012.
You read that right - nearly six months behind schedule.
The last time the Congress finished work on the regular appropriations bills by the start of the new fiscal year was 1994, just before the elections that swept Democrats from power on Capitol Hill.
As detailed on my blog yesterday, the Senate did not shine in this budget debate; only a handful of amendments were actually given a full review on the floor. In other words, Senators never came close to actually sorting out spending priorities across the federal government.
While this omnibus spending bill embraced the $85 billion in automatic budget cuts that kicked in on March 1 from the sequester, it did give some agencies some wiggle room to deal with the spending cuts. Some examples:
+ The Pentagon can move money around to funnel $10.4 billion into its Operations & Maintenance account; while much of that will go to regular needs of the Armed Services, some of the extra resources could also help avert layoffs for civilian defense workers.
+ The FBI also received special attention in this measure, as the agency seems unlikely to have furloughs this fiscal year.
+ The Border Patrol also benefits from the budget reshuffle, as furloughs should be avoided, though like the TSA, agents may see less in the way of overtime pay.
+ NASA gets a better structure to its reduced budget from this plan, which gives the space agency more flexibility in moving around money to address internal needs.
This spending plan though did not fix every agency's problems, as a number of concerns were left unaddressed, like a bipartisan push to move $50 million in the FAA budget to fund air traffic control towers at smaller airports.
While that amendment had more Democratic sponsors than Republicans, Senate Democrats refused to allow a vote on the amendment, which would have used a chunk of unspent money from previous budget years to pay for the air traffic towers.
"How can it be controversial to transfer $50 million," Sen Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked on the Senate floor, "to save air traffic control towers?"
Moran said he was told by the Secretary of Transportation this week that the Obama Administration opposed the amendment - but many believed it would have been approved overwhelmingly if the Senate had been given the chance to hold a vote, as Republicans accused Democrats of playing politics on the sequester.
"The reason my (Democratic) colleagues want the sequester to hurt and be painful, is that they want to rationalize that bigger government is better," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), whose amendment to funnel $2 million to resume public tours at the White House was blocked by Senate Democrats in an almost straight party line vote.
On the floor during debate, Coburn claimed that President Obama had told him in a recent telephone call that he wanted the sequester to hurt, to prove Republicans wrong on budget cuts.
"He's my friend," Coburn said of Obama. "I challenged him on that when he said it to me."
As soon as the Senate wrapped up work on this year's budget, debate began on the budget resolution for next year, the first time Democrats have brought the non-binding budget outline to the floor in four years.
Meanwhile, the House is expected to approve a Republican budget blueprint on Thursday, and follow that up with approval of the omnibus budget for this year.
Then the House will be ready to go home for a two week Easter break, with the Senate ready to follow by Friday or Saturday.
