The House and Senate Appropriations Committees have released the fiscal year 2014 omnibus appropriations bill that combines all 12 regular appropriations bills into one package to reduce the number of votes lawmakers need to take to set funding levels across the federal government. A stopgap spending bill will move to avoid a government shutdown before the omnibus itself is up for a vote. This omnibus would be the first bill in years where Congress has deliberately tweaked and set spending levels – spending for the last few years has generally been on autopilot with “continuing resolutions” simply extending prior fiscal year funding levels.

The omnibus bill provides $1.012 trillion for the functioning of the government, consistent with the bipartisan Murray-Ryan budget deal. The bill notably includes a military pension “fix” to shield medically retired personnel and survivor benefits plan recipients from cost-of-living reductions.

While many programs saw modest increases in funding over fiscal year 2013 levels, including many supported by the Center for Effective Government and its allies, the bill’s overarching emphasis on deficit reduction neglects national priorities. These include including new early childhood education proposals, infrastructure development, and improving the affordability and availability of health care coverage—all of which could stimulate the economy and create jobs.

The focus should be on jobs. As a timely yet unfortunate reminder, the bill was released just days after December employment report showed disappointing rates of job creation. The number of jobs created totaled a meager 74,000, a number less than half of the average jobs created per month in 2013 and well below predictions that job creation would stay on trend at 200,000 jobs per month.

The Murray-Ryan budget agreement continues the years-long trend of excessive austerity. The fiscal year 2014 funding level falls almost $200 billion below the president’s requested level, $46 billion below the Budget Control Act cap, and $27 billion below Paul Ryan’s original fiscal year 2014 proposed spending level. (See chart below.)

While a concentration on deficit reduction has indeed cut the deficit in half since 2009, it has only made the employment situation worse than it should be at this point, half a decade after the Great Recession began. The labor force participation rate is at its lowest point since 1978, the average American hasn’t seen anything more than a modest recovery, and millions make up the ranks of the long-term unemployed out of work for more than half a year.

Although the budget agreement mitigates some of the pain that would have otherwise been felt from another full year of sequestration, the fiscal situation is far from where it should be if the United States is to build a healthier economic recovery.