Ben Miksch, State and Federal Policy Associate

First, thanks so much if you called your federal lawmakers last week to send a message to the Budget Conference Committee telling them to pass a budget deal that cancels sequestration. In a refreshing change of pace, Congress did today pass a budget deal! And they passed it far in advance of the next fiscal cliff, the January 15th deadline that it felt like we were careening towards. That's the date when the current Continuing Resolution funding the government expires.

The deal made progress on sequestration, unfortunately it didn't get as far as cancelling it entirely. For the glass half-full types, the deal replaces about half ($45 billion) of the sequestration cuts in 2014 and about a quarter ($17 billion) of the cuts in 2015. For the glass half-empty types, it still leaves most of the sequestration cuts in place. The newly injected funding is distributed evenly between defense and non-defense discretionary spending, and advocates are hopeful that it will result in increased funding for housing and homelessness programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The budget deal only sets the size of the budget, but doesn't lay out what the money will actually get spent on. What's next is for the total spending to get divided up among the 12 appropriations subcommittees, including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development subcommittee, which oversees housing programs. Each of those subcommittees will decide on funding levels for each of the programs they cover. Congress is working quickly to pass these bills before the January 15th deadline.

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As mentioned above, the deal offers us an opportunity to fight for increased funding levels for critical HUD housing and homelessness programs that have all felt the pain of sequestration cuts, including the McKinney Vento Homelessness Assistance Grants, the Runaway Homeless Youth Act, and others. Unfortunately it will not have any impact on the current McKinney Vento funding round going on now, in which managers of Continuum of Care contracts across the country have been instructed to tier their programs in preparation of an anticipated 5% cut. This means communities have made recommendations to HUD on which of their programs should get cut if it comes to that.

It's important to note that in the grand scheme of things, discretionary spending (non-mandatory Congressional spending on things like defense, education, and affordable housing) is far lower than what even the most ardent supporters of budget cuts had thought was possible three years ago:

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