US Senate Approves Approximate $1.7 Trillion Omnibus Spending Bill

The U.S. Senate Thursday gave overwhelming bipartisan approval to an approximately $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, one day before a stopgap funding is set to expire and setting up a showdown in the House where Republicans strongly oppose the bill.

House Republicans had been strongly urging their colleagues in the Senate to oppose the omnibus and instead force the passage of another short-term measure into January, when they’ll assume the majority and thus have more say over what the spending bill includes.

But 18 Republicans, including Oklahoma's Jim Inhofe in what was likely his last vote, joined all Democrats in approving the spending package, which will keep the government operating through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2023.

"We don’t have any shortage of Senators over there who like to spend money, as well," Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK1) said in a recent interview.

But GOP senators insist the package contains many wins for them: "It's the right thing for the government," Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said on the floor prior to the vote, "the right thing for the nation, I believe." 

Sen. Shelby is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

What many Republicans in the Senate like about the bill is that it fully funds their defense priorities, as outlined in the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act that Congress passed last week. 

The $858 billion topline number is a 10 percent increase over FY 2022.

The bill contains $773 in funding for non-defense domestic programs, an increase of about nine percent over last year.

And fresh off of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's rousing speech to a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday night, the omnibus includes $45 billion in weapons and aid for Ukraine. There’s also $38 billion in emergency disaster relief.

"It spends a lot of money," Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said in an interview earlier this week, "and has a lot of things that are not related to anything dealing with actual spending."

The bill does not spend any new money on Covid-19, as President Biden had wanted, and does not expand the Child Tax Credit, as many Democrats had wanted, but it does include bipartisan reforms to the Electoral Count Act, a ban on TikTok on government devices, and retirement savings incentives authored by Senator James Lankford (R-OK).

"Trying to get lower-income Americans incentivized to do more savings for their retirement,” Lankford said, who voted no on the omnibus, despite supporting aspects of it, “getting access to their retirement without a penalty… It’s a big issue for lower income Americans."

The House is expected to take up the legislation Friday morning. It will be one final opportunity for outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has earned a reputation for being able to unify the Democratic caucus when circumstances require, to do it one more time.