The House and Senate have passed a $1.14 trillion spending bill to fund the government through next September.
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The Senate is expected to approve the spending bill, along with a House-passed tax package, later in the day.
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Senior Senate aides have said the two measures, part of a bipartisan deal that would avert a shutdown, would likely be combined in that chamber and considered in a single vote on Friday. The bill will be signed by President Obama as soon as it hits his desk, as lawmakers are heading home for Christmas.
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The tax breaks and spending provisions cover everything government does – and limit how federal money can be spent. It would also permanently extend an enhanced child tax credit, a $2,500 college tax credit and a more robust earned-income credit for low-income families.
On Friday several hardliners expressed disappointment over a year that ended with passage of a spending bill funding many of Obama’ priorities while excluding their own, including curbs on Syrian refugee resettlement in the U.S.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California, a key negotiator, swung forcefully behind the measure after showing frustration over its lifting of an oil export ban.
The measure does, however, give Republicans a major win by lifting the 40-year ban on crude oil exports. It awards increases of about 6 percent, on average, above tight spending caps that were a relic of a 2011 budget and debt deal – and were opposed by both GOP defense hawks and Democrats seeking boosts in domestic spending.
“It’s not flawless, and we certainly didn’t get everything that we wanted”, McConnell said of the budget compromise.
In an unseemly bow to campaign contributors, both parties agreed to postpone taxes that help finance the Affordable Care Act. “The legislation strengthens our military and protects Americans from terrorist threats, while limiting the overreach of intrusive government bureaucracies like the IRS and the EPA”, House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said in a statement following the vote.
Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, said he believes there will be enough support to help Republicans pass it. Liberal Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, announced her backing for the spending bill on the House floor. Only six Democrats and Independent Bernie Sanders, a presidential hopeful, voted against the measure. The White House opposed the rollbacks, but Republicans and many Democrats savored them. However, rank-and-file House Republicans last week stiffened against the bipartisan spending and tax plan, prompting accusations by the governor’s office that House GOP leaders had failed to deliver on a budget deal for the second time in a month that they themselves had helped negotiate.
But the package also includes a hodgepodge of specialty tax breaks for thoroughbred racehorse owners, NASCAR racetrack developers and makers of Puerto Rican rum.
Numerous tax breaks in the extenders bill are the sorts of tax “cuts” that are the sort of targeted, incentives-and-behavior altering tax cuts and deductions that are best thought of as spending laundered through the tax code.
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The liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice said in a statement that the package is only increasing the “budget hole” and “would lose more revenue than was “raised” by the fiscal cliff package in 2013″.
