The Capitol is pictured.| AP Photo 2,200 pages, $1.8 trillion, dead of night What’s really in the year-end tax and spending bill?

Congress released more than 2,200 pages of legislation in the dead of night — containing $1.1 trillion in spending, about $680 billion in tax cuts and a string of other policy changes.

Both the fossil fuel and alternative energy industries can count themselves as winners, following a trade of the decades-long ban on crude oil exports for an extension of wind and solar tax credits.


Syrian refugees, 9/11 first responders and the District of Columbia’s elementary and middle school sets are among the other winners. Obamacare, banks and even portrait artists look to be among the losers. And don’t forget hard apple cider — a winner, thanks to Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is helping out upstate New York apple growers by updating tax laws surrounding the alcoholic refreshment.

Here's a look at some of the other winners and a losers:

WINNERS

Syrian refugees: A big, bipartisan majority in the House just voted to place new limits on Iraqi and Syrian refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. But that measure didn’t make it into the omnibus spending measure, which instead includes an even more bipartisan proposal to require more visas for certain travelers.

9/11 first responders: The Zadroga Act, which provides benefits for first responders who got sick at Ground Zero, actually got a 75-year extension in the omnibus. The extension came about two weeks after Jon Stewart, the former "Daily Show" host and longtime supporter of the measure, made another trip to Capitol Hill to “shame” lawmakers into not forgetting the program.

Vladimir Putin: If you ask Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) at least. McCain accused a pair of senior appropriators, Sens. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), of choosing “to reward Vladimir Putin and his cronies with a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars” in the omnibus, and he even threatened to vote against the spending bill. That’s because Shelby tucked a provision into the omnibus that removes restrictions on using Russian-made rocket engines for military space launches. The provision directly overrides the National Defense Authorization Act, which limited United Launch Alliance to nine Russian engines for competitive military space launches. Why? ULA, a Lockheed Martin-Boeing joint venture that builds its rockets in Alabama, has argued it won’t have enough Russian-made RD-180 engines for military launches until a U.S. alternative is ready.

Preschool programs: Head Start gets a funding bump of $570 million in the spending bill, up to $9.2 billion, in just the latest reflection of how early education has become a top priority for the White House and congressional Democrats. The Child Care and Development Block Grants would also get an extra $326 million, while grants designed to help states expand and improve pre-K education are also included.

Michelle Obama’s lunch program: The first lady and her nutrition standards won for another year. Schools that could show they were having trouble with a requirement of including whole-grain items in meals can still seek a waiver, and future restrictions on sodium would also be put on hold under provisions continued from last year’s year-end spending bill. Still, it remains a far cry from the all-out waiver that Republicans sought to put into appropriations legislation last year, a controversial move that sparked a public spat with Obama.

The IRS: The tax agency gets graded on a curve, after spending the last 2½ years in the GOP’s cross hairs for its improper scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status. But the IRS actually got a funding bump from a Republican Congress this year, after it disclosed that hundreds of thousands of taxpayers had their personal information compromised through an agency application.

Charitable groups: The nonprofit sector gets several of their tax priorities extended permanently — including incentives for contributing from retirement funds, donating food and land preservation.

Trans fat: The FDA’s decision to basically toss artificial trans fats out of the U.S. has caused no small level of concern within the food industry. But lawmakers inserted language into the omnibus that gives the industry some cover from lawsuits by declaring that partially hydrogenated oils basically can't be considered unsafe until at least 2018.

LOSERS

The Affordable Care Act: Say what you will about past efforts to dismantle Obamacare, there was broad bipartisan agreement to delay or pause three major taxes in the Democratic health care law. The two-year pauses on the Cadillac tax and medical device tax, along with a one-year break in the health insurance tax, will subtract about $35 billion in funding for the ACA. More importantly, they represent the most significant hit to the president’s signature domestic achievement since it was passed more than five years ago. While the tax breaks are temporary, most experts predict they’ll be very difficult to reinstate given the broad bipartisan opposition. And the “risk corridors” language in the omnibus will lead to a $2.5 billion hole in the program.

The financial services industry: Banks got a few odds and ends in the omnibus, including a provision that keeps the Securities and Exchange Commission from mandating that companies disclose political donations. But banks and Republicans fell short in efforts to pare back Dodd-Frank regulations and in replacing capital lost in the recent transportation bill. On top of that, there was no serious effort to block the Labor Department from implementing a new fiduciary standard rule for retirement brokers, and efforts to impede Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rules were also brushed aside.

MIXED BAG

Immigration groups: Republicans pushed for much harsher provisions to stop improper payments of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, refundable incentives to poor families that were extended permanently in the tax deal. The measure will keep many newly documented or undocumented immigrants from retroactively claiming the incentives, but Democrats had feared the so-called integrity provisions could be much worse. Still, the National Immigration Law Center called it “shameful that anti-immigrant legislators continue to feel a constant need to add an anti-immigrant imprimatur to their legislation.”

ODDS AND ENDS

The alcohol industry: Cider, beer and rum — oh my! It’s no surprise that the extenders bill would bring back an incentive to prop up the rum industries in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, one of the temporary tax breaks often labeled as a poster child for special interest handouts. But the tax extenders bill also gives relief to smaller brewers and distillers who were forced to cough up excise taxes to the government multiple times a month.

And the Schumer-backed CIDER Act would allow wine made from apples, pears, apple juice concentrate or pear juice concentrate to be defined as cider as long as the alcohol content didn’t exceed 8.5 percent. “You could say the CIDER Act is moving. How about them apples?” Schumer said at Senate Finance markup of tax provisions in February.

Portrait artists: Though something about Washington suggests committee chairmen and other bigwigs will find other ways to pay up. From page 590 of the omnibus: “None of the funds made available in this or any other act may be used to pay for the painting of a portrait of an officer or employee of the federal government, including the president.”

Sledders: The omnibus contains language, which already passed the House Appropriations Committee, asking the Capitol police to take it easy on sledders who want to take advantage of the steep hill on the West Front.

Helena Bottemiller Evich, Paul Demko, Jeremy Herb, Jon Prior, Maggie Severns, Patrick Temple-West, Zachary Warmbrodt, Colin Wilhelm and Austin Wright contributed to this report.