DeLauro Leads House Passage of Bipartisan Government Funding Legislation

March 6, 2024
Press Release

Today, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) led House passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, a package of six domestic funding bills focused on helping families and communities across the United States. The legislation provides American families relief from the higher cost of living, protects women’s rights, combats climate change, and honors America’s commitments to its veterans.

“American families are living paycheck to paycheck – they have not seen their wages increase in years and struggle with the rising cost of living,” said Congresswoman DeLauro. “That is why I was proud to lead the House passage of a bipartisan government funding package that invests in programs and services that the people of Connecticut rely on. These investments will keep our government open and operational, while helping Americans with inflation. This legislation will also create good paying jobs, protect women’s rights, honor our commitment to our veterans, and confront the climate crisis.”

This first government package invests in America’s future and delivers for the American people by:

  • Helping with the high cost of living, creating and sustaining tens of thousands of good paying jobs, fighting inflation, and providing full funding for key lifelines such as food assistance and more affordable housing and homeownership.
  • Protecting women’s rights by blocking attempts to limit women’s access to reproductive health care, including abortion, and by increasing funding for gender-based violence prevention and prosecution programs.
  • Confronting the climate crisis, fighting climate change, and ensuring America’s energy independence with robust, transformative investments in deploying clean energy technologies in communities across the country, and providing funding for cutting-edge scientific and climate-related research.
  • Honoring our commitments to our veterans by ensuring they receive the care and benefits that they have earned and investing in veterans’ health care, including targeted investments that advance women's health, mental health, and homelessness assistance.

This package includes the following funding bills: Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies; Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies; Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies; Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies; Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies; and Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies.

This funding bill:

  • Reverses Republican efforts to slash nutrition programs and critical resources that farmers, children and families depend on.
  • Fully funds the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the administration’s requested level of $7.03 billion, an increase of more than $1 billion that will help parents keep their children fed.
  • Reverses Republican efforts to drastically cut the fruit and vegetable benefits in the WIC program.
  • Blocks Republican efforts to limit women’s access to mifepristone.
  • Fully funds participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
  • Supports those facing homelessness by preventing the eviction of nearly 5 million low-income households served through HUD’s rental assistance programs, including those currently served by Section 8 and Public Housing.
  • Supports veterans with investments in health care, including targeted investments that advance women's health, mental health, and homelessness assistance – fully meeting today’s estimates for the fiscal year 2025 needs of veterans' medical care.
  • Confronts the climate crisis with more than $15 billion of transformative investments in clean energy and science, which will help develop clean, affordable, and secure American energy and increased climate change and resiliency funding to help military installations adapt to rising sea levels and worsening natural disasters.
  • Invests more than $10 billion in our nation’s water infrastructure, critical to protecting communities from more frequency and severe storms and addressing worsening droughts.
  • Continues support for Long Island Sound program for protection and conservation efforts.
  • Creates and sustain good-paying American jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure with investments in airports, highways, transit, passenger rail, port, and affordable housing.

A detailed summary of the legislation is available here(link is external).