Federal funding for construction and infrastructure programs will remain at current levels until mid-March 2025, under a stopgap spending measure passed by Congress on Dec. 20.
The agreement, forged by House Republicans and Democrats just six hours before a scheduled shutdown of the federal government, also provides $110 billion in disaster aid, the first such appropriation since Hurricanes Helene and Milton tore through the Southeast U.S. this past fall. Allocations include $29 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response, recovery, and mitigation activities; $12 billion for the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program; and $8 billion in emergency highway funds, a portion of which will cover the full cost of replacing the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, fulfilling a promise made by President Joe Biden in March. That project currently is estimated at nearly $2 billion.
Other disaster relief spending includes $3.4 billion to repair storm damage at Department of Defense installations, $3.1 billion for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure improvements, and $1.5 billion to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for rehabilitation and repairs, studies and projects to reduce the risks of future disasters, and to address water infrastructure needs.
Zoe Middleton, associate director for just climate resilience for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), noted that passage of disaster recovery aid, though welcome, unnecessarily delayed multiple recovery efforts across the country.
“The nation has recorded 95 major disaster declarations just through November this year, many of which—including floods, wildfires and intensified storms—bear the fingerprints of climate change,” Middleton said in a statement. “Communities need and deserve robustly funded recovery programs to get back on their feet in the weeks and months following a disaster.”
Although last-minute, sometime fractious negotiations to keep the government funding has become routine for Congress in recent years, the latest process was upended when President-elect Donald Trump and his close advisor Elon Musk inserted themselves into the process, lashing out on social media at the size and scope of a previously negotiated bipartisan funding plan that appeared on track for easy approval.
Unwilling to rankle the incoming administration, however, House Republicans rejected the proposal on December 18, returning the next day with a stripped down version that included a Trump-requested two-year suspension of the debt ceiling. Democrats and debt-averse Republicans teamed up to defeat that measure, sending leaders back to the negotiating table as federal agencies readied for a shutdown.
Eliminating the debt ceiling provision, with Trump’s approval, according to published reports, proved sufficient to get the funding bill over the finish line, with the House voting 366 to 34 for approval. The Senate was expected to endorse the measure later that evening. President Biden signaled he would sign the bill as well.
“While it does not include everything we sought,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement, “it includes disaster relief that the President requested for the communities recovering from the storm, eliminates the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires, and would ensure that the government can continue to operate at full capacity.”
Among the casualties of the negotiation process was a provision in the original bill that would have transferred control of federally owned land containing the partially demolished RFK Stadium to the District of Columbia. Such a move would have given the District greater flexibility in determining new use for the site, including a potential new stadium that would be built by owners of the Washington Commanders NFL team. An erroneous social media claim by Musk that the spending bill contained $3 billion to fund the stadium apparently doomed the transfer, despite specific wording in the legislation precluding the use of federal funds for such a use.
