Congress to vote on $1.1 trillion spending plus $629 billion in tax cuts

Paul Singer | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives will begin voting Thursday on a colossal trade, giving Democrats a $1.1 trillion spending bill largely free of controversial policy provisions in exchange for a Republican-backed $629 billion package of tax cuts.

Unable to convince enough members to back such a global deal, House leaders will break them into two votes. On Thursday, the House will vote on the tax package, which is likely to pass with almost exclusively Republican votes. On Friday, the spending package will come to the floor needing a majority of Democrats to pass. That way, Republican conservatives can vote against the spending bill, Democratic liberals can vote against the tax bill, and both bills still pass and a government shutdown is averted.

Congressional leaders unveiled the massive package that will keep government funded through September 2016 in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

The 2,009-page bill abandoned most of the controversial provisions Republicans wanted to add to block President Obama's policies on topics ranging from immigration to wetlands rules to armor-piercing bullets. But it includes a major Republican goal of lifting a 40-year ban on exports of domestic crude oil.

The 233-page tax measure will permanently extend the enhanced child tax credit and earned income tax credit that were boosted by the 2009 stimulus bill, and extend through 2019 a popular corporate tax break that allows companies to more quickly depreciate the value of new equipment. The two bills also delay for two years unpopular taxes that were part of Obama's signature health care law.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican with one of the most consistently conservative voting records in the House, demonstrates the delicate balancing act Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is attempting.

"We gave up more than we should have" in the spending bill, Lamborn said Wednesday. "The things that as a Westerner I was hoping to have to rein in the EPA and other agencies have disappeared." Lamborn noted that the House has passed legislation to block a Environmental Protection Agency rule expanding federal authority over wetlands and other "waters of the U.S.," but the Senate has not passed the bill.

On the tax bill, "I am swallowing some things I don't like" — like tax credits for wind energy — but "I'm voting for the extenders because I think the good outweighs the bad," Lamborn said. "On the omnibus (spending bill), I am coming to the opposite conclusion."

The federal government is operating on a short-term spending measure that ran out Wednesday, because Congress did not pass the 12 annual spending bills that fund the federal government. To prevent a government shutdown, the House and Senate moved a short-term bill providing funding though Dec. 22, providing enough time for both chambers to vote on the omnibus bill that includes all the outstanding spending measures and the tax package.

Democrats expressed strong opposition to the tax bill. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wednesday morning "Republicans’ tax extender bill provides hundreds of billions of dollars in special interest tax breaks that are permanent and unpaid for. These massive giveaways to the special interests and big corporations are deeply destructive to our future."

The combined legislation covers everything government does, and, as usual, contains scores of provisions limiting how federal money can be spent. For example, the legislation again bars Obama from closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility where terror suspects are held or spend money to build a new facility to house them. It also bars the U.S. from implementing the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. But it does not include provisions barring implementation of Obama's plan to defer deportations for children brought to the U.S. illegally and some of their family members.

The bill bars the government from listing the sage grouse as an endangered species, but it does not include Republican-backed provisions to prohibit the EPA from regulating air emissions related to global climate change.

The bill does not prohibit the administration from resettling Syrian refugees in the U.S., as many Republicans and some Democrats hoped, but it does include new anti-terrorism limits on visitors from 38 countries who can travel to the U.S. without a visa. While the legislation extends existing prohibitions on abortion-related spending, it does not include a ban on federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which has been a key goal of Republicans for much of the fall.

"This bill provides responsible funding for nearly all of the federal government, while helping to stop wasteful and unnecessary spending and reining in regulatory overreach that hinders growth and job creation," said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. "But it also represents a compromise that Members on both sides of the aisle can and should get behind."

Ryan said Wednesday "in divided government, no one gets exactly what they want," but he said there are major policy victories in the bill that Republicans can be proud of. The long-term extension of tax cuts achieves something he has sought for years: "Certainty in the tax code so we can create more jobs. This is one of the biggest steps for the rewrite of our tax code that we have made in many years."

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus, said he was still uncertain how many conservatives would vote for the package. "I think there is a real appreciation for the tough hand Speaker Ryan was dealt, and the lack of leverage that he had," Meadows said. Coming out of a Republican conference meeting, Meadows said the tax provisions and lifting the ban on oil exports were well received, but "probably the biggest concern was the Syrian refugee issue."

Ryan told reporters that he has a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to bring to the Senate floor early next year a bill that passed the House with a broad bipartisan majority to establish strict new security screening procedures for Syrian refugees.

Ryan said he expects both the spending bill and the tax package to pass the House with bipartisan support.

"It's a good compromise," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "In spite of Republican majorities in the Senate and House, we Democrats were able to ensure that this legislation creates and saves middle class jobs, protects the environment, and invests in renewable energy sources." He said the bills came over from the House with about 200 policy riders intended to weaken clean air and water regulations, undermine consumer protections, and lift campaign contribution limits.

"We did not allow 99 percent of these to be included."

Contributing: Bart Jansen, Erin Kelly

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