The fiscal 2024 funding package that funds the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year became law March 23. Some agencies received the funding they need to boost their operations while others faced slight cuts or flat funding.
But the biggest win for federal workers was the fact that the 20% cuts that Republicans were pursuing last year as well as the social policy riders were not included in the package. The bill also did not disturb the President’s 5.2% pay adjustment for 2024.
Here are some of the highlights:
Transportation Security Administration
The bill includes $1.1 billion to align TSA employee compensation with the federal workforce and expand collective bargaining rights for Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) as part of an effort that was initially funded in fiscal year 2023 and implemented in July 2023.
This allows TSA to address recruiting and retention challenges as the agency responds to post-pandemic travel volumes. Since its implementation, TSA attrition is down over 50% compared to this time last year.
The agreement also ends the partial diversion of the passenger security fee and redirects it to TSA operations. Due to the end of the diversion, we no longer need to push for H.R. 3394, the Fund the TSA Act – a victory for AFGE.
The bill also restores funding for exit lane TSA personnel – $98 million.
Federal Bureau of Prisons
The bill includes $8.4 billion for salaries and expenses at BOP and $179.7 million for buildings and facilities for construction, acquisition, and maintenance.
Congress also directed BOP to submit reports on:
Congress also encourages BOP to hire additional programming staff to successfully provide these key programs and ensure that each facility has a Special Education Teacher on staff. They also encourage BOP to increase the number of correctional officers at medium-security institutions.
The Office of Personnel Management is also directed to work with the BOP to analyze how the General Schedule levels for BOP employees can be modified to address concerns about pay-related matters, and to brief the committees on these efforts no later than 90 days after the enactment of this Act.
Social Security Administration
The bill includes $14.2 billion for SSA’s administrative expenses—an increase of $100 million over FY2023 and a rejection of cuts proposed in the House bill. Tight spending caps significantly limit the ability to provide SSA the funding it needs to provide the service that Americans who have paid into Social Security deserve. Addressing backlogs in key workloads and wait times will require sustained increases in funding to allow SSA to increase staffing and make needed IT improvements. The administration’s request was for $15.5 billion. In real terms, this is another drastic cut to SSA.
Veterans Affairs
The bill funds VA medical care at $138.127 billion, matching the FY2024 budget request—including $121 billion in new funding plus $17.1 from the 2024 advanced appropriation—for $2.3 billion increase over FY2023. This includes $71 billion for VA in-house medical services.
While we support the topline VA appropriations, we remain concerned that VA may allocate its funding away from VA to private care as the agency has discretion to transfer some of its funds between VA and private care accounts. In the President’s 2025 budget request, the VA proposes to transfer $7.3 billion from VA Medical Services and $600 million from the Medical Facilities accounts to Medical Community Care. The agency also has discretion in how it allocates spending between mandatory spending related to toxic exposure and other VA spending, which makes it difficult to determine private care spending as roughly half of toxic exposure spending is private care. The VA 2025 budget request shows that it expects VA in-house costs to grow by 5% and private care by 12% between 2024 and 2025.
Defense Department
The bill provides DoD $824.5 billion, a $26.7 billion increase over FY2023. The bill, however, dropped language from the FY 2023 defense appropriations act that prohibits DoD from reducing its civilian workforce without analysis of the effects of these reductions on workload, readiness, and costs. This could encourage DoD to make arbitrary cuts to the DoD civilian workforce that are not in line with the current and future needs of uniformed personnel whose mission is to defend the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency
The bill provides $9.16 billion to the EPA, a significant cut – roughly $1 billion less than EPA’s enacted 2023 budget of more than $10.1 billion. This reduction in funding will prohibit EPA from being able to hire the necessary number of full-time employees to protect human health and the environment. The administration’s proposed FY 2025 budget for the EPA requests $10.994 billion and 17,145 FTEs to support the agency's mission, including to hire more than 2,000 new employees. The FY 2024 minibus appropriations cuts to EPA will prove an obstacle to the agency being able to hire more EPA employees.
Department of Agriculture
The bill provides $1.79 billion—a $44 million increase over fiscal year 2023—for the Agricultural Research Service, USDA’s premiere in-house research agency.
The bill also provides $1.19 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), an increase of $32 million over fiscal year 2023. This funding will help ensure FSIS can continue its vital work protecting America’s food supply without being forced to reduce its staffing levels, which would jeopardize food safety and exacerbate supply chain delays.
Governmentwide A-76 ban
The funding package includes a continued ban on the use of A-76 public-private competition to convert federal jobs to contractor performance.
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