The House Appropriations Committee scheduled its first markup of an FY18 appropriations bill for next week. The FY18 Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) spending bill will be marked up in subcommittee on Monday, June 12 at 7:00 pm. The MilCon-VA bill is traditionally the easiest of the 12 spending bills to pass through Congress. The text of the FY18 MilCon-VA bill should be posted online Sunday evening. House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Culberson (R-TX) said that his bill is currently being drafted and will be marked up soon.
The House and Senate have not produced an FY18 budget resolution yet, which usually sets the overall topline spending level that appropriators then use to determine their subcommittee allocations. The 2011 Budget Control Act set an overall cap on discretionary spending of $1.065T for FY18. This is $5B less than what was appropriated in FY17. Many Republicans and Democrats consider this spending level to be too low, but changing those levels will require an FY18 budget agreement. The House and Senate Budget Committees are expected to begin work on their own budget resolutions in the coming weeks, but it’s not clear when those measures will go to the floor for consideration and then get reconciled into a compromise version. The Senate Budget Committee has a hearing scheduled for next week with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the President’s FY18 budget request.
House Republicans are interested in passing a 12-bill omnibus measure by the August recess. The bills still need to be marked up in their respective subcommittees and then full committee before being compiled into an omnibus for consideration on the House floor. With the House scheduled to be in session only 27 more days before the August recess, appropriators will have to act quickly. Some House members have suggested working on weekends to get their bills done. And the House Freedom Caucus suggested to Republican Leadership that they cancel the August recess to continue to work on tax reform and FY18 appropriations.