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Bargainers resolving last hurdles to spending, tax deal

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., center, accompanied by, from left, Sen.

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It funds the government through the 2016 budget year, raising defence spending and extending tax credits. Congress has included that provision since 1996, and Republicans have said a spending bill is not the place to target the Second Amendment. Democratic aides said Cochran was seeking as much as $160 million for the project.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus that helped bring down former speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he was still uncertain how many conservatives would vote for the package.

“We are putting our bills together”.

“In divided government, you don’t get everything you want”.

Language limiting reimbursements to insurance companies losing money on the federal and state health insurance exchanges was retained, despite Democratic efforts to erase it.

The government is now set to run out of money Wednesday night at midnight, but leaders are prepared to pass another short-term funding measure lasting a few days as they move to approve the broader bill. “The speaker noted that though there are significant wins in these packages, we must not repeat this process and instead get back to regular order in 2016”.

“Democrats won some; they lost some”, he said. “I really think this is going to help us grow our economy”.

Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said, “While not getting everything we wanted, the speaker noted that both packages include many provisions that Republicans have long fought for”.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the final sticking point Tuesday was Republicans’ demand to lift a 40-year ban on the export of USA crude oil.

Democrats sought to extend the child tax credit, opposing GOP demands for Social Security numbers for participants, which Democrats said could exclude children of immigrants here illegally.

There were indications late Tuesday that Ryan and Republicans had been forced to give substantial ground and that the spending measure would not include provisions tightening restrictions on Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

“It’s the most important policy in the country for renewable energy”, Bryan Miller, vice president for policy at the San Francisco-based rooftop solar developer Sunrun Inc., said. There may also be a two-year pause in the existing 2.3 percent medical device tax and a one-year suspension of a levy now imposed on health insurers, which the companies generally pass on to customers as higher premiums.

-Democrats. The spending bill provides major relief from tough caps on spending, which Democrats and the Obama White House have agitated for all year. Lifting the ban is a top ask for GOP negotiators working on the sprawling legislation. “I don’t know if the lifting of the export ban will be among them, but our position on this is pretty clear”.

-A $650 billion package extending a series of tax breaks over 10 years, with $560 billion of the total in permanent extensions, including for business research and development. The price tag of the overall package was unclear but it could mushroom to several hundred billion dollars over a decade, which would further add to federal deficits. The two bills also delay for two years unpopular taxes that were part of Obama’s signature health care law.

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Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., raised objections to the tax-extension measure even though he said it would make permanent an expansion of the earned-income tax credit and the child tax credit – both priorities for Democrats.

File-AP