Here’s what’s in and out of the government funding agreement

By Katie Lobosco and Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — The Senate approved a slimmed-down, temporary government spending plan early Saturday morning, averting a shutdown of the federal government. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law later Saturday morning.

The passage of the package came after President-elect Donald Trump torpedoed a bipartisan agreement struck earlier in the week. A House vote on a Trump-endorsed funding bill failed on Thursday evening, but the chamber then approved a revised bill Friday evening.

The legislation funds the government through March 14, setting up another spending showdown in the early days of the Trump administration. Republicans will control both the Senate and House come January, but the party will have slim margins in both chambers.

The package also retains billions of dollars in disaster relief sorely needed by states hit hard earlier this year by two major hurricanes.

Here’s what else is in the bill:

More disaster aid funding

The spending bill provides about $100 billion to help Americans trying to recover from multiple natural disasters in 2023 and 2024. The funding is in line with the roughly $100 billion topline request from the Biden administration in November.

Some $29 billion will help replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, which has dwindled after contending with two major hurricanes that ripped through the Southeast earlier this year, as well as other disasters.

In October, FEMA rapidly spent $9 billion of a $20 billion infusion from Congress responding to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The agency also had to handle wildfires, floods and tornados this year. Federal data shows the costly disasters are now happening more frequently.

Economic aid for farmers

The bill includes $10 billion in economic aid for farmers, one of the last sticking points in negotiations earlier this week. Lawmakers from agriculture-focused states have argued that the help is desperately needed as the US’s farmers are facing lower commodity prices and higher costs for supplies.

The spending agreement also includes a one-year extension of the farm bill – a sweeping package that governs many agricultural and nutrition assistance programs. Typically, the bill is renewed every five years, but the most recent version was passed in 2018 and the extension lapsed at the end of September. The continuing resolution extends it for a year.

Maryland bridge funding

Under the the bill, replacing the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland will be fully funded by the federal government. The legislation will also allow the US Treasury Department to recoup money from any settlements related to the bridge’s collapse to help pay for the rebuilding.

A cargo ship crashed into the bridge in March, causing it to collapse and severing access to critical shipping routes in and out of the Port of Baltimore. Six workers on the bridge were killed.

Rebuilding the bridge could cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, according to an estimate released by the Maryland Transportation Authority earlier this year.

Extending telehealth flexibilities in Medicare

The funding agreement also includes a three-month extension of a pandemic-era measure that expanded the use of telehealth in Medicare.

More senior citizens and Americans with disabilities have been able to get care via telehealth since the Covid-19 pandemic began in early 2020. Eligibility for the service was broadened beyond just those living in rural areas, and seniors have been able to conduct the telehealth visit at home, rather than having to travel to a health care facility.

Here’s what’s no longer in the funding package:

Debt ceiling extension

The GOP package that failed Thursday would have suspended the debt ceiling until January 30, 2027, addressing Trump’s key demand from his Wednesday evisceration of the original deal. Instead, Republicans are looking at including an increase of the debt ceiling in a future package next year.

The debt ceiling is currently set to return on January 2. It was suspended as part of the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act, which Congress passed in June 2023. Lawmakers likely would have until mid-2025 to address the debt ceiling since the Treasury Department could temporarily use cash on hand and other measures to keep paying the nation’s bills and avoid a first-ever default.

Although Republicans will control Capitol Hill and the White House next year, having to deal with the debt ceiling then would add another complicated issue onto the party’s already-full plate, which includes extending the sweeping 2017 Trump tax cuts.

The 2023 deal took months to craft and brought the nation uncomfortably close to a default, which would have unleashed global economic chaos and had major consequences on many Americans’ finances.

Established by Congress, the debt ceiling is the maximum amount the federal government can borrow to finance obligations that lawmakers and presidents have already approved. Treasury needs to borrow to pay the bills since the US spends more than it collects in revenue, resulting in a budget deficit.

The nation’s debt currently stands at $36.2 trillion.

Reforms for pharmacy benefit managers

After two years of failed attempts, lawmakers appeared close to including a slate of reforms for pharmacy benefit managers, the controversial middlemen between drug manufacturers and insurers who have raised the ire of Congress and many others with their opaque practices, in the government funding package. But the measures did not make the cut.

The now-dead funding deal would have required PBMs to provide more information on the rebates they negotiate and retain, as well as what they pay for drugs and how much they compensate pharmacies. It would have removed the connection between the price of drugs and the compensation the PBMs receive in Medicare Part D drug plans and shifted the payment model to flat fees.

Plus, the agreement would have required the industry to pass along all rebates to the health plan sponsors, which include insurers and employers, in the commercial insurance market. It would also have effectively eliminated so-called “spread pricing,” in which the PBMs withhold part of the payment they receive for drugs from pharmacies, in Medicaid.

The effort aimed to increase transparency and change the industry’s compensation structure, said Ross Margulies, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a law firm specializing in health care. The concern has been that PBMs may have the incentive to prefer higher-cost drugs since they can negotiate larger rebates on them.

The Federal Trade Commission in September sued the largest PBMs – CVS Health’s Caremark Rx, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Rx – for allegedly inflating insulin prices.

PBMs argued that the legislation would weaken their ability to lower drug costs and could result in higher premiums for senior citizens.

Control over RFK stadium

A deal to give Washington, DC greater control over the RFK stadium appeared to be lost when it was left out of the bill passed by the House on Friday — but in an early morning surprise, the Senate unanimously passed a bill giving DC control over the land around the stadium.

HR 4984, the DC Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium Campus Revitalization Act, previously passed the House 348-55 in February. If signed into law by President Joe Biden, the measure will transfer the land around the stadium from the federal government to DC — paving the way for the stadium to be redeveloped, and for the NFL’s Washington Commanders to return to the location after spending the last 27 years in Landover, Maryland.

Pay raises for lawmakers

The bill that Trump torpedoed would have provided lawmakers with their first pay raise since 2009.

Both Republican and Democrat leaders had agreed to include the language, which would have allowed members to receive an automatic cost-of-living adjustment to their base salaries of $174,000 per year, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.

This would have been a change to current practice, in which Congress takes steps in each spending bill to remove that cost-of-living adjustment. That has been in place since the 2009 recession.

The agreement also would have allowed members of Congress to opt-out of Affordable Care Act health coverage — a requirement that infuriated some GOP lawmakers — and would have let them enroll in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

Restricting investments in China

Also stripped from the bill was a provision that would have limited US investments in China, particularly in the technology sector.

Democrats have slammed the removal of the measure, arguing that its absence would benefit Elon Musk, who helped derail the bipartisan package on Wednesday.

“Musk’s investments in China, and ties with its government, have only grown over the last few years – alongside his growing involvement in American politics,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a letter Friday to congressional leaders.

“It is no surprise, then, that ‘President’ Musk does not want to see a funding deal containing this provision be signed into law,” she wrote.

The measure would have “prevented wealthy investors from continuing to offshore production and US intellectual property into China,” she wrote.

Criminalizing revenge porn

A bipartisan bill that criminalizes the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), sometimes referred to as revenge porn – including deepfakes, had been attached to the original spending package. It would also have required social media and other websites to have procedures in place to take down an image within 48 hours of a valid request from a victim.

Currently, many states have laws addressing the publication of NCII, but this regulation, which was introduced earlier this year as the Take it Down Act, would have created the first federal law.

Lawmakers and tech companies have been facing pressure to do more to combat revenge porn as artificial intelligence has made it easier to create and spread the content.

Funding for pediatric cancer research

The final bill does not reauthorize federal funding for the National Institutes of Health’s Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program. But the Senate on Friday night passed the measure as a standalone bill, which authorizes $12.5 million per year for five years. The legislation, which was approved by the House in March and now goes to Biden for his signature, will fund the program into 2028.

The initiative supports lifesaving research of treatments and cures for childhood cancer for the last nine years, according to Rep. Jennifer Wexton and Sen. Tim Kaine, both Democrats from Virginia. The bipartisan bill would have provided funding for seven years.

Miller, a Virginia resident with an inoperable brain tumor, died in 2013 at the age of 10. The following year, former President Barack Obama signed into law the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act, which authorized $12.6 million in annual funds for childhood disease research through fiscal year 2023.

Reimbursing food stamp theft

The bipartisan bill would have continued protections for low-income Americans who had their food stamp benefits stolen, often through skimming devices that get recipients’ Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card information.

Congress allowed states to replace the stolen benefits on a limited basis using federal funds, as part of a government funding bill two years ago. So far, states have replaced more than $150 million in benefits stolen from more than 300,000 low-income SNAP households across the country, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, citing US Department of Agriculture data.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox, Clare Foran, Manu Raju and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

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