House Overwhelmingly Approves Spending Measure That Rolls Back Sequester

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly

approved a multi-year budgetary framework negotiated earlier
this month by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and
Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.). The measure
rolls back some of the reductions in spending increases known as
“sequester” that kicked in under the terms of the Budget Control
Act, which Congress passed and President Obama signed in the summer
of 2011. The Budget Control Act sought to slow the growth of
federal spending as the US debt was reaching its statutory limit of
$14.3 trillion. The sequester kicked in because legislators could
not agree on cuts, as required by the act. The US debt now stands
at more than $17 trillion.

The bill passed today limits federal spending to just more than
$1 trillion on defense and domestic programs for 2014 and 2015, and
does not touch spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
It does not balance the budget in the foreseeable future and the
federal government will continue to spend more than it brings in in
revenue.

169 Republicans joined 163 Democrats in voting in favor of the
bill. Nancy Pelosi had previously urged Democrats to
embrace the suck and support the bill, while John Boehner
claimed conservative groups that opposed the spending measure had
“lost
all credibility.” Nevertheless, 62 Republicans opposed the
spending bill, including libertarian-leaning Republicans like
Justin Amash and Thomas Massie as well as Republicans sometimes
identified as “Tea Party.” Thirty-two Democrats also voted against
the spending bill, mostly because they wanted to see spending at
even higher levels.

You can see how your member of Congress, and the other 425
members* of Congress, voted here.

*7 didn’t vote.

More Reason on the budget and on the sequester.

Related: The Special Inspector General for the Afghanistan
Reconstruction is
investigating why the military spent nearly half a billion
dollars on refurbishing aircraft for the Afghan air force before
abandoning the project. Top Obama Afghanistan experts, meanwhile,
were
stumped at a Congressional hearing when asked just how much the
US has spent in Afghanistan this year.