House Speaker Paul Ryan told Republican lawmakers Tuesday that congressional leaders reached an agreement on a massive $1.1 trillion bill to fund the government through September, setting up votes later this week that would avert a shutdown, according to multiple lawmakers who attended a closed door session with the speaker. The House is expected to vote on the tax legislation Thursday, the spending bill on Friday.
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It was in the Senate version of THUD until being stripped out on the Senate floor recently.
With the July 1, 2013, restart suspended, the industry is operating under the pre-July 1, 2013, rule.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said he was impressed with the work Congress had done on the tax-credit legislation and the $1.14 trillion omnibus spending bill.
Despite dissenters in both parties, passage was likely and President Barack Obama’s signature seemed assured.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Wednesday “in divided government, no one gets exactly what they want”, but he said there are major policy victories in the bill that Republicans can be proud of. More than 50 of the tax breaks expired at the start of the year.
With temporary financing of federal agencies expiring Wednesday at midnight, the House by voice vote approved a stop-gap bill preventing a government shutdown through next Tuesday, giving lawmakers time to finish the long-term spending legislation. The final product is shaping up as a massive measure that’s sure to be scorned by the GOP’s tea party base and roster of presidential candidates.
As their top triumph, Republicans cited a lifting of the nation’s ban on crude oil exports, imposed 40 years ago during chronic oil shortages. Hoyer called it “too big and expensive”.
“In my view it is practically an immorality in terms of how it damages the future”, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said about the tax bill. The 233-page measure will permanently extend the enhanced child tax credit and earned income tax credit that were boosted by the 2009 stimulus bill, and extend through 2019 a popular corporate tax break that allows companies to more quickly depreciate the value of new equipment.
The package would let people who live in states without income taxes continue deducting local sales taxes when they file their federal returns. Democrats succeeded in killing GOP attempts to roll back Obama environmental regulations, and obtained extensions of wind and solar tax credits, and permanent extension of the child tax credit.
The bill also delays or completely suspends taxes that are meant to pay for Mr Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Republicans and some Democrats were behind the push for a two-year delay on taxes on high-cost health insurance policies, which don’t take effect until 2018 but would be delayed until 2020, and a two-year suspension of the current 2.3 percent tax on some medical devices. A senior Democratic leadership aide told CNN that including the oil provision in the spending bill “undermines” support for the bill. They said they were still studying the spending measure. Surviving was widely supported language tightening curbs on foreign tourists visiting without visas.
“The road to this final bill has not been easy, but it has been an open process that followed “regular order” to the maximum extent possible”, Rogers said in a statement.
Democrats said they blocked over 150 GOP-sought provisions.
Other notable additions include a $2 billion increase to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is the largest increase in more than a decade.
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Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Mary Clare Jalonick and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; and by Kathleen Miller, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Billy House, James Rowley, Erik Wasson, Alex Nussbaum, Brian Eckhouse and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.
