Capitol Hill went into a lame duck session after the mid-term election in November 2022 in order to complete some important unfinished business of the 117th Congress. A significant achievement was to send an omnibus spending bill to President Joseph Biden that he signed into law (P.L.117-328) on December 29. The package will fund the federal government through September 2023. It passed the Senate on a 68-29 vote and the House of Representatives by a vote of 225-201-1. Amounting to $1.7 trillion, it will provide funding for the rest of Fiscal Year 2023, which ends on September 30 of this year. The accomplishment compares well with events that unfolded during the previous year. A spending agreement could not be reached until March 2022 for Fiscal Year 2022 that ended last September 30.
Weighing in at 4,155 pages, major features of P.L. 117-328 include a total of $209.9 billion (a $14.8 billion increase) for the Labor-HHS-Education account. Within that amount, the National Institutes of Health will receive a total of $47.5 billion and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have $9.2 billion. The bill also contains $15.3 billion in bipartisan earmarks that will provide funding for some 7,000 congressionally-directed spending projects. Many of these endeavors will benefit higher education institutions.
Looking in the legislative rearview mirror, the 117th Congress drew to a close in December 2022. During its two calendar year lifespan, 24,784 measures were introduced that included bills, amendments, resolutions, joint resolutions, and concurrent resolutions. Of these total amounts, the House featured the introduction of 9,704 bills and the Senate 5,357 bills. Topically, in the House 1,292 bills pertained to health and 433 to education while in the Senate, 714 were in health and 220 in education.
Looking forward, the 118th Congress came into existence in January 2023. It differs from its predecessor in two fundamental ways. First, Democrats no longer will hold the majority in both chambers. Republicans now have a slight numerical edge in the House of Representatives. That party is headed by Kevin McCarthy, who succeeds Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker. Both individuals are part of the delegation from California. Another difference worth noting is that in the 118th Congress, women will make up more than a quarter (28%) of all members, the highest percentage in U.S. history and a considerable increase from where matters stood only a decade ago. Counting both the House and the Senate, women made up 153 of 540 voting and nonvoting members of Congress, representing a 59% increase from the 96 women who were serving in the 112th Congress a decade ago. A record 128 women are serving in the newly elected House, accounting for 29% of the chamber’s total. Of the 22 freshman representatives who are women, 15 are Democrats and seven are Republicans. In the Senate, women hold 25 of 100 seats, tying the record number they held in the 116th Congress.