The two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement was hammered out during weeks of negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Congress Sweeping budget deal passes House despite weak GOP support Trump had pushed House Republicans to back the bill, but most opposed it.

The House with limited Republican support passed a massive budget deal Thursday that would free lawmakers to hit the campaign trail next year without fretting about fiscal turmoil keeping them tied down in Washington.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — who hammered out the deal during weeks of talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — flexed her political muscle and rounded up 219 Democratic votes for the measure, an impressive display that more than offset the lack of Republican support.


GOP leaders — despite a boost from President Donald Trump — scrambled to round up Republican backing in the hours before the House passed the two-year, $2.7 trillion agreement on a 284-149 vote. The deal is expected to clear the Senate next week.

Only 65 out of 197 House Republicans ended up voting for the measure, rejecting the pleas from Trump and their own leadership. Democrats noticed.

"I wanted it to be very clear, the unity of the Democrats, what we did there," Pelosi told reporters after the vote. "It would have been nice to have more votes on their side. It was hard to tell Democrats to vote for an agreement which is negotiated and is a compromise when it is so one-sided on the vote. But nonetheless, they supported what we did."

While the budget pact holds the promise of two years of peace from the fiscal battles the country has endured since Trump first entered the ring with congressional Democrats in 2017, it does not actually fund the government or technically thwart a shutdown. It paves the way, however, for a brief return to funding the government the old-fashioned way, with spending bills flowing from this umbrella agreement based on the budget totals for both the military and non-defense programs.

Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers disliked the agreement, which calls for more than $320 billion in spending over sequestration levels over the next two years. One-hundred-thirty-two Republicans voted against it, a big majority of the GOP conference. But 219 Democrats supported the package and supplied victory for Pelosi.

If the two parties had not struck a deal, $126 billion in sequestration cuts would set in come January, ravaging every discretionary account in the federal government.

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On its face, the deal appears to be a brief bipartisan détente amid a summer of extreme strife between the president and his opposition party. But the agreement is propelled, too, by raw political motivation.

"It helps everybody, including the majority — not having to deal with that at election time," said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who bested his Democratic opponent by 3 percentage points in 2018.

Once the bill is signed into law, the country’s biggest budget questions will be answered until well past the election, allowing lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to fundraise and campaign next year without getting stuck in Washington or tarring their reputations before voters go to the polls to pick a president and decide who in Congress gets to stick around.

“Both sides don’t want to risk a government shutdown, let alone a default,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “Nobody wants a high-drama event like that leading into the elections.”

To secure that election-year certainty, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were forced to step outside their comfort zones in voting for spending levels that make them cringe. Trump had to be called upon to help.

"House Republicans should support the TWO YEAR BUDGET AGREEMENT which greatly helps our Military and our Vets. I am totally with you!," Trump tweeted seven hours before the vote.

The president also joined in on a conference call Thursday morning to make a hard sell to several House Republicans who remained wary of voting for the bill, assuring that he would remain supportive of the deal and vowing to back them up if they walked the proverbial plank, according to a source who was on the call.

House Republicans should support the TWO YEAR BUDGET AGREEMENT which greatly helps our Military and our Vets. I am totally with you! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2019

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said early Thursday that the president’s nudge “helps with some of those members who are on the fence” as GOP leaders worked “to build the numbers” ahead of passage.

Still, with many GOP lawmakers leery of the nearly $57 billion increase the measure would allow for non-defense programs over the next two fiscal years, most of the 197 Republican lawmakers in the House ended up opposing the bill.

Even after the legislation passed, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) offered an amendment to rename the measure “A Bill to Kick the Can Down the Road and For Other Purposes.” That amendment was rejected, 47-384.

The Republican Study Committee and House Freedom Caucus — groups with a combined membership of more than 150 Republican lawmakers in the House — both opposed the measure.

Republican Study Chairman Mike Johnson (R-La.) said it was the group’s “duty” as the largest contingent of conservatives in Congress to oppose "irresponsible” plans to hike spending.

On the Democratic side, Pelosi personally lobbied her members to come together in supporting the agreement, following her failure last month in uniting the caucus around the Democratic version of the $4.6 billion border aid package.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took a victory lap after the vote, saying Democrats had enough support to pass the package without Republican support.

“219. We passed it on our own!" he said

Even some progressives concerned about inflating the Pentagon’s budget rallied around the speaker of the House on passage. Their backing is particularly significant considering the Congressional Progressive Caucus revolted earlier this year to sink a funding plan that contained even higher spending limits for non-defense programs.

The vote split the four Democrats now known as the “Squad,” with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) voting against the bill, and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) voting “yes.”

Ocasio-Cortez, visibly conflicted on the House floor, was one of the last House members to cast her vote after huddling with Pressley and Tlaib.

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The budget deal includes $5 billion more for the military in fiscal 2020 funding than what House Democratic leaders like Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) wanted to provide earlier this year, in addition to $15 billion less for non-defense programs like those of the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development.

“We’ve got to look for every leverage point that we have, but this is a critical one to get off the table for a whole host of reasons,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the group of progressives, said of the budget deal.

While the deal does not reduce “the bloated Pentagon budget,” the Congressional Progressive Caucus said in a statement before the vote, it does “close the gap in funding for families” by allocating $27 billion more than current levels for non-defense programs in the upcoming fiscal year, compared to $22 billion more for the military.

The Chamber of Commerce urged House lawmakers in a letter Thursday to vote for the budget agreement, warning that the organization “will consider including votes on this legislation in our annual How They Voted scorecard.”

Under the deal, defense programs would see a 3 percent hike in fiscal 2020, topping off at $738 billion. Domestic programs would increase 4 percent over current levels to a total of $632 billion, which includes a $2.5 billion adjustment for the 2020 census.

The agreement includes about $77 billion in offsets, which is far less than the $150 billion the Trump administration sought. Those offsets are expected to kick in near the end of a decade, meaning they will likely never take effect.

Melanie Zanona and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

