“We’re proving you can actually enact significant, long-term reforms, achieve conservative policy goals, and get them signed into law”. And it would permanently extend a specialized 9/11 healthcare program for thousands of individuals who have become seriously ill as a result of emergency-response and cleanup work at the World Trade Center site.
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The White House has said President Obama would sign the package, which will remove the threat of a government shutdown until September 30, about a month before the 2016 elections. Republican victories include the end of a four-decade ban of exporting USA crude oil.
“Let’s take steps – as the legislation we’ll consider proposed – to support more jobs, more opportunity, and more economic growth”, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said on the Senate floor.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a key negotiator, swung forcefully behind the bill after showing frustration over its lifting of the oil export ban.
“They had to put big oil in the omnibus” to get the spending measure passed, Pelosi told reporters Friday before the vote.
A number of GOP hardliners voiced similar concerns, many expressing disappointment about a spending bill that funded many of Obama’s priorities while excluding their own despite Republican control of both chambers.
Dozens of tax breaks will be extended or made permanent, including some for renewable energy development, business expenses and depreciation, child tax credits and assistance for low-income households.
But tea party lawmakers were dismayed by the burst of spending and a lack of wins for conservatives.
“This is a bill that protects America, rebuilds it, and invests in the future”, she said. “At least in the House”.
The House voted on the spending portion of the measure on Friday, when it won support from House Republicans by a 150-95 margin.
Ryan, who just six weeks ago succeeded the deposed former Speaker John Boehner, all but claimed the bill’s passage as a personal triumph, citing it as an example of his drive “to get our House back on track”.
That trend reversed itself today, as a majority in both parties voted in favour of the measure.
Included in the budget are tax-extenders that the House Democrats criticized. The new agreement bumps up defense spending by $23.9 billion over last year’s levels and prohibits the government from using funds to move inmates at Guantanamo Bay into the United States.
After a period of belt-tightening in Washington – including automatic budget cuts known as sequesters imposed in 2013 – the spending measure provides a notable $66 billion increase in federal outlays above previously agreed-upon limits, divided equally between military and non-military programmes, for 2016. The Senate followed suit and easily passed the measure, 65-33.
Twenty-seven Republicans, 37 Democrats and one Independent voted in favor of the legislation. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was the only presidential candidate to miss the vote.
Presidential Candidate Senator Rand Paul called in right after explain why this is such a mistake.
The Senate was also set to approve the legislation, bundled into a single bill, in a fast-track series of votes later.
The budget pact was the last major item in a late-session flurry of bipartisanship in Washington, including easy passage of long-stalled legislation funding highway programs and a rewrite of education programs.
It also clears away an nearly $1 billion backlog of federal courthouse projects and sends hundreds of millions of dollars to the states and districts of a handful of powerful lawmakers such as Sen.
Republican representative Tim Huelskamp, who opposed the legislation, told CNN that the omnibus spending deal only passed as “a courtesy to the new speaker”.
And it includes a two-year moratorium on the so-called medical device tax, a provision of Obama’s health care law that angered Republicans and Democrats alike.
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The end of the 40-year ban on most US crude oil exports is a “big win”, according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, and it’s a top priority for Republicans.
