Connecticut is set to secure federal funding in the form of disaster aid, direct relief for farmers and submarine investments from a year-end federal spending package.
Those funds — and the paychecks of thousands of federal employees — were all at stake with the imminent threat of a shutdown. But Friday evening, after a dramatic few days, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to fund the government.
The state’s congressional delegation played a pivotal role in pushing for more relief, particularly for farmers in Connecticut who were affected by extreme weather events in the past two years. In smaller farming states, like those in New England, farmers focus on growing specialty crops. They’re typically unable to get the same kind of federal assistance as farmers in states that grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat.
The provisions were tucked into a continuing resolution to maintain the government’s current funding levels through mid-March, including an extension of the Farm Bill.
Congress isn’t quite out of the woods yet. The U.S. Senate still needs to vote on the measure, but if senators miss the midnight deadline and take slightly longer to wrap up their work, there will be minimal effects on the government.
Farm relief and submarine funding
With the funding bill approved, Connecticut is set to receive billions of dollars in disaster assistance. That includes $23 million in agriculture disaster and economic relief; $6.7 million in small business disaster loans for 77 applicants; and $48 million in Federal Highway Administration Emergency Relief. The latter funding is slated to help with long-term housing and infrastructure as it relates to recovery from disasters.
Some farmers in Connecticut, who lost crops and sustained farmland damage from weather events in 2023 and 2024, may be able to tap into a $220 million block grant fund that provides “compensation to producers for necessary expenses related to crop, timber, and livestock losses, including on-farm infrastructure.” Because the program is geared toward small and midsize farmers, only states in New England as well as Alaska and Hawaii are eligible for the block grants.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, championed the creation of the Farm Recovery and Support Block Grant Program. And as the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, she helped craft and negotiate the year-end spending bill.
The idea came together after meeting with a farmer in her district, William DellaCamera, who sustained hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses after a 13-minute hail storm in August. He drove a tractor from Northford to Washington, D.C., where he met with DeLauro and the Connecticut delegation to urge them to do more for small farmers to recoup losses.
DeLauro said she’s working with Connecticut and the state agriculture commissioner to rapidly identify farmers in need who will qualify for compensation. Eligibility does not hinge on whether or not a farmer has crop insurance or whether there was a national disaster declaration in place.
“It is historic aid for farmers,” DeLauro said in an interview after the House vote. “Where you can see something happen and provide immediate relief on a problem, that is not usually the way of the Congress.”
DeLauro also hailed the responsiveness of the legislation. “One of the frustrations is [when] you can’t help people in real time and it takes a long time to get something done,” she said. “This happened in real time. That’s what this place is about. This is what we need to be doing.”
The bill includes the White House’s emergency request of $5.7 billion for the Virginia-class submarine program to help General Dynamics Electric Boat address workforce gaps, pay raises and cost overruns last year and this year. The company’s Columbia-class submarine program will also get nearly $6 billion to help with long-lead-time materials.
That will give a boost to Electric Boat, the nation’s primary sub manufacturer with locations in Groton and Quonset Point in Rhode Island, as well as Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. It comes after Congress approved a defense policy bill for fiscal year 2025 that authorizes full funding for one Virginia-class sub and “incremental” funding for a second. Congress and the administration were at odds over procurement for a second vessel.
A dramatic few days
Up until late Friday, all of the Connecticut-specific funding was up in the air as Congress was sent into a last-minute scramble to avoid a shutdown before the holidays.
The 11th-hour drama started Wednesday when intervention from President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk scuttled a short-term spending deal brokered by both parties. That set off a scramble among House Republicans to find a new path forward, but members of their own party voted against a new bill Thursday, along with most Democrats.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social during negotiations. “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP.’ This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
There was steadfast opposition to suspending the country’s borrowing limit, also known as debt ceiling, for two years, which Trump had called for. After nixing that element of the bill, the House overwhelmingly passed the continuing resolution and the supplemental funding requests, 366-34.
Democrats, including those in Connecticut’s congressional delegation, fumed over the collapse of the original spending deal brokered by both parties. But a group of conservative Republicans also pushed back against the debt ceiling provision.
Right before the House vote, DeLauro railed against GOP leadership for stripping out some measures included in the original deal, such as funding for pediatric cancer research and reforms to pharmacy benefits managers to create more transparency on negotiating drug prices. She took particular issue with Musk’s role in the process.
Ultimately, she voted for the bill she helped craft — as did her other four Democratic colleagues from Connecticut.
“In eastern Connecticut, the short-term spending bill will ensure that federal employees, including roughly 9,000 sailors and officers at the Groton submarine base, will not have their pay disrupted, as well the Coast Guard Academy staff in New London. Their important work will continue uninterrupted,” U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said. Courtney also took on a leading role to ensure that disaster and agricultural supplemental funding would pass before the end of the year.
Connecticut lawmakers argued that the 48-hour spending fight is a precursor to what the next year could look like when Trump returns to office and Republicans regain complete control of Congress.
They also raised fears about the rising influence of Musk, a billionaire tech entrepreneur who was appointed by Trump to co-lead a new federal agency tasked with cutting back regulations and overhauling the government.
“This wouldn’t have happened without the intervention of Trump and Musk yesterday,” U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District, said in an interview, calling Musk “a fourth branch of government.”
“We’re seeing the agenda of the Trump administration before they’re even sworn in in front of our eyes,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Thursday. “Rig the rules in order to make the billionaires richer and telegraph that as your number one priority to Congress.”