House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wis. meets with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015, as lawmakers work to complete end-of-the-year business and pass a comprehensive spending bill. He said the tentative agreement was being reviewed by congressional scorekeepers and would be presented to lawmakers later Tuesday evening to review, though other aides said details were still being finalized. However, he said he was unsure about whether he could vote for either. So congressional leaders also planned to approve a bill preventing a government shutdown through next Tuesday, giving lawmakers time to finish the long-term spending legislation.
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But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were able to block most of the high-profile provisions conservatives sought.
Republicans wrangled with Democrats over proposed policy riders on issues ranging from the environment to the Syrian refugee crisis.
“We won some, we lost some”, Ryan, R-Wis., said at the event. “But all told, we’ll make sure that we keep government funded and that we advance some of our priorities and, namely, that’s to create jobs”.
A major priority for the GOP and some Democrats was lifting the 40-year-old bar against exporting USA crude oil, an upshot of the 1970’s oil shortages that industry supporters consider unneeded with today’s explosion of domestic oil extraction.
Reid said Democrats will only agree to lift the export ban if Republicans agree to extend tax credits for five years for producers of renewable energy such as wind and solar. And numerous spending increases contained within the $1.1 trillion spending bill are financed by budget gimmicks that produce questionable savings, like double-counting savings from Social Security changes and assuming inflated revenues from sales of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Democrats are still looking over the deal and haven’t said if they will support it, but Ryan sounded confident that the package will pass.
He said that the deal also has negative implications for any future effort to overhaul the tax code, which according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) won’t be undertaken until 2017 at the earliest.
McConnell said Republicans were also aiming for a companion bill to extend a number of expired tax breaks permanently rather than every year, as Congress has been doing.
Democrats, despite their minority party status in Congress, exacted a steep price in the negotiations, due to to Obama’s veto pen and Republicans’ need for their votes on the spending bill. Hoyer called it “too big and expensive”.
The spending bill, known as the “omnibus” because it combines the 12 spending bills Congress must pass each year, sets many policy decisions for the coming year.
The tax break package, which will cost about $650 billion, also includes a two-year suspension of Obamacare’s medical device tax.
“We’re not getting any new revenue so what is there left to do but cut, cut, cut?” said Ellison, who is co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.
The GOP won a reprieve for the expiring “bonus depreciation” break that allows businesses to write off 50 percent of the cost of capital investments immediately while the rest is deducted more gradually over time. “At the end of the day, we are going to get this done”, he said.
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Insurance companies say this levy, known as the health insurance tax, is passed on to consumers, drives up premiums and imposes a financial burden on many families and small businesses.
