Avoids shutdown in time for the holidays
CONGRESS approved a $1.1 trillion year-end spending package on Friday, Dec. 18 that will fund federal agencies through next fall, avoiding a government shutdown in time for Congress members to return home for the holidays.
With strong bipartisan support, the House overwhelmingly approved the measure in a 316-113 vote, with a $622 billion tax section of the agreement in a 818 to 109 vote. The Senate later backed the bill 65-33, sending it straight to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into law, reported CNN.
There was concern until earlier this morning that there would not be enough support for the spending bill in the House, but last-minute lobbying efforts by leadership secured far more than the needed votes, said The Washington Post.
The lopsided House vote was a major victory for new Speaker Paul Ryan, who secured the votes of the majority (150 Republicans) of the House GOP conference.
Obama called Ryan after the vote to thank him “for helping government work,” he said. The president also invited Ryan to join him for a meal at the White House in the new year.
“He’s going to be our chief negotiator, we’re going to have other deals,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the whip team and the Appropriations Committee. “Divided government dictates that so we want him to have as strong a hand as he possibly can.”
Some conservatives in the House were unhappy to see the tax deals go to passage. The vote is not “a function of the spending bill but … a courtesy to the new speaker,” said Kansas GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who voted against the bill.
Huelskamp warned that Republicans who supported the measure will get grief from constituents when they go home, and also argued the bill is “an early Christmas present to Donald Trump, because it represents another example of the Republican establishment cutting deals with Democrats.”
“If anyone needed more evidence of why the American people are suffering at the hands of their own government, look no further than the budget deal announced by Speaker Ryan,” Trump, the GOP front-runner, said in a statement. “In order to avoid a government shutdown, a cowardly threat from an incompetent President, the elected Republicans in Congress threw in the towel and showed absolutely no budget discipline.”
On the other hand, House Democrats were wary of the $1.1 trillion appropriations package because it would lift a ban on crude oil exports that has been in place for 40 years, while many Republicans said it allows for too much spending and not enough focus on key issues such as immigration and abortion.
The spending bill’s passage was a win for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who assuaged liberals in her caucus threatening to torpedo the bill over concerns about lifting the ban on exporting oil in the bill, and the lack of a bankruptcy provision in the bill to help a fiscally strained Puerto Rico.
Pelosi told reporters that adding the oil export ban to the spending bill made it “very difficult” to convince some Democrats to vote for the legislation, but also said that by allowing it to be included, Democrats were able to extract concessions of their own, including an extension of renewable energy tax credits.
Votes from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus were “key, because it was believed the GOP could provide only about 100 votes for the deal so Democrats would need to provide the rest to make it to the necessary 218 vote threshold.”
“Absent big oil we could not have had many of these other successes,” Pelosi said before the vote. “[Republicans] wanted big oil so much that they gave away the store.”
Some conservatives complained that Ryan’s deal did not include some items they vouched for, such as new restrictions on Syrian refugees coming into the US, or funding limits for Planned Parenthood. But Ryan argued that in divided government, there was “a limit to what Democrats could accept,” and the deal contained “some big wins for the country, whether it’s lifting the oil export ban, increasing military spending or renewing health care for the 9/11 first responders.”
The House Speaker repeatedly stressed that he does not like rolling up all the spending bills and complicated policy provisions into one measure. He also believes the House is simply finishing the work left by Boehner.
“We inherited a process, a cake that was pretty much more than half-baked,” Ryan said.
