On Sept. 30, the federal fiscal year ended, and Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 went into effect. While government funding isn’t one of the most attention-grabbing pieces of the ERLC’s work, our advocacy on this issue is of great importance to Southern Baptists because we care deeply about how our taxpayer dollars are being used. As ERLC President Brent Leatherwood wrote in his letter to Congress on this topic,
“As a nation, our values and priorities are most clearly displayed through the allocation of our resources. It is our desire for those resources to be used in a way that promotes life, religious liberty, and the flourishing of all our neighbors.”
To best represent the interests of Southern Baptists in these negotiations, the ERLC assists members of Congress and their staff as they participate in the annual congressional appropriations process by highlighting areas of concern and support for lawmakers, attending meetings with their staff, and clearly communicating policy priorities.
What is the status of 2025 government funding?
Instead of fully funding the government for FY 2025, Congress has opted to extend FY 2024 funding levels to Dec. 20. In order to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY 2025, Congress must finish government funding negotiations before this deadline in order to prevent a government shutdown. Since the focus through the beginning of November will be on Election Day, legislators will need to return in mid-November prepared to finalize appropriations negotiations and pass any remaining legislation during the Lame Duck session.
How is the government funded?
Each year, Congress must move legislation through the appropriations process in order to fund the government. The process should work like this:
- White House budgetary recommendations: The president submits his proposed budget in the early spring, then appropriators in the United States House of Representatives and Senate begin drafting each of the 12 appropriations bills that fund different parts of the government.
- Committee draft bill text: For each appropriations bill, there is an appropriations subcommittee in both the House and the Senate. Draft legislation is created, amended, and changed throughout the committee process before it passes through a floor vote. Often, the House and Senate versions of each bill are significantly different, especially in a divided Congress.
- Bill passage: Once these 12 bills pass the appropriations committees, they then pass through both chambers and go on to be signed by the president.
In reality, the president’s proposed budget is largely ignored, and when the House and Senate begin working on their versions of each of these 12 bills, they look vastly different depending on the party in power. Compromise versions of those bills are often combined into:
- a large omnibus (which is a bill that combines all 12 appropriations bills for one vote),
- or a few smaller minibus bills (a bill that contains multiple appropriations bills) that make it easier for Congress to pass the bills rather than voting on them individually.
The last time Congress passed all 12 bills individually was in 1994.
Why does this government funding process matter?
As trillions of taxpayer dollars are allocated each year, it is important that Southern Baptists speak into how that money is spent. Continued advocacy work by the ERLC helps push back against the usage of federal dollars for initiatives Southern Baptists find morally objectionable, including “gender transition” procedures, domestic and international abortion and abortion-related travel, and taxpayer-funded IVF.
As appropriations bills move through this lengthy and complicated process, there are significant opportunities for harmful provisions to be added in unnoticed or for important provisions to be excluded. Consistent advocacy on these issues is essential to ensure the inclusion of important language, such as the Hyde Amendment which prevents the use of government funding of abortion.
What is the ERLC advocating for in government funding?
One major win in the appropriations negotiations thus far was the inclusion of longstanding life and conscience protection provisions in both House and Senate bill text. These provisions, such as the Hyde Amendment, provide essential, baseline protections to ensure federal funding does not go toward abortion. In the 2022 and 2023 Fiscal Years, these provisions were excluded from the initially proposed bills. Though they were ultimately included in the final version of appropriations bills, it is noteworthy that these protections were not compromised in the draft bill text phase this year and Fiscal Year 2024.
There are several additional provisions in the proposed House bills that the ERLC is urging Congress to include in its final package. These include provisions like:
- Prohibiting funding for abortion providers and abortion-related travel;
- Prohibiting funding for “gender transition” procedures and prescriptions;
- Prohibiting the use of federal funding to discriminate against an individual due to their religious beliefs that marriage is between one man and one woman; and,
- Prohibiting funding to go toward the implementation of a variety of harmful federal rules, some of which are explained here.
Though it remains unlikely that all of these provisions would be included in a compromise package, the ERLC is continuing to advocate for as much progress to be made as possible in protecting life, caring for our neighbors, and ensuring conscience protections remain in place.
However, the proposed House and Senate appropriations bills additionally contain significant funding for several items of concern to Southern Baptists. Some of these provisions are funding for:
- Abortion providers at home and abroad;
- “Gender-specific care” that can go toward abortion-travel; and,
- The United Nations Population Fund.
What happens next in government funding?
Congress will continue to debate these individual bills before a potential shutdown on Dec. 20. In the meantime, the ERLC will continue to advocate on behalf of Southern Baptists and make lawmakers aware of these concerns and priorities as they engage in these discussions.
