House approves $1.7 trillion bill, including boosting arts and public broadcasting funding

Congress passed a massive $1.7 trillion year-end bill on Friday that boosts funding for the arts and public broadcasting.

The 225-201 passage in the House of Representatives, a day after the bill passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote of 68-29, also prevents a government shutdown.

President Joe Biden is expected to sign the fiscal 2023 spending bill into law.

The bill would increase funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by $27 million. Their budgets are now $207 million each.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives a $10 million increase to $535 million for fiscal year 2025 The CPB, which provides subsidies to public service broadcasters, operates in an advanced credit cycle. The bill also provides CPB with $60 million for connectivity technology, $31 million for the Ready-to-Learn program and $56 million for funding for a next-generation warning system.

The legislation does not include a bill that would have allowed newspapers and broadcasters to negotiate their content with major technology platforms. Earlier this month, Facebook launched an aggressive lobbying campaign against the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, threatening to remove news from the platform if it was passed, rather than “submit to state-mandated negotiations that would destroy any value we attach to news outlets mistakenly ignore increased traffic and subscriptions.”

Lawmakers viewed the Omnibus Act — the last to pass this Congress — as a way to tie together a variety of legislative priorities.

The legislation includes a bill to increase merger filing fees to improve antitrust enforcement. A series of antitrust laws passed by congressional committees to limit big tech’s power did not make it into the final package.

The Omnibus Act also includes amendments to the Voter Counting Act to clarify that the vice president’s role in counting votes for the presidential election is ceremonial. It comes in response to efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to turn away voters on Jan. 6. Pence noted that it was not within his constitutional authority to do so.

The bill also provides $45 billion in aid to Ukraine. Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked lawmakers for their support in defending the country against a Russian invasion and called on them for further help.