The deal, reached late on Tuesday after weeks of wrangling, includes a $1.15 trillion USA government spending bill and a companion $650 billion package of tax breaks.
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Senate Republicans met to discuss the deals Wednesday morning, and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he’s hopeful that all 100 Senators will agree to bypass the necessary procedural hurdles and vote on both the Omnibus funding bill and the tax extenders package on Friday after the House has passed both measures.
“Republicans’ tax extender bill provides hundreds of billions of dollars in special interest tax breaks that are permanent and unpaid for”, she said.
Congress got rid of earmarks – pet projects and money designated for specific districts, but lawmakers were quick to claim credit for provisions they got in the bill to help back home.
The year-end crush on the large and complex bills comes days before the Christmas holidays. House members were planning to pass a bill for stopgap spending on Wednesday that would fund the government through December 22 and give Congress the time it needed to consider the measure for the full year. Instead, consensus appears to be forming around a bill that would ban visa-free travel to the USA for most foreigners who have recently visited Iraq and Syria.
The measure extends dozens of tax breaks for businesses and families, while financing government operations through next year. Republicans have been vocal critics of the tax, saying it will stifle growth of medical device industry.
A spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid refused to confirm a deal had been reached.
The spending bill is expected to be paired with legislation that would extend about $750 billion in expiring tax breaks for businesses and individuals.
The $1.1 trillion (£730billion) spending bill includes both Republican-backed initiatives and Democratic priorities. Democrats are happy that the wind and solar energy companies’ tax breaks will be extended for five years.
And while the White House has expressed opposition to lifting the crude-oil export ban and other elements in the omnibus, it said Wednesday it was supportive of the overall result. But it also makes permanent things that affect personal tax returns, like the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. Democratic leaders cautioned that final details were still being worked out.
But if you’re going to move forward and follow Speaker Ryan’s notion that we’re going to move on the offense this year and go back to regular order and pass all the appropriations bills then I think many of my colleagues will look at it like I do, that we need to move past this, get this done.
“Today is a down payment on tax reform and our work continues as we strive towards a complete overhaul of our broken tax system”, he said.
Omitted were two major GOP goals: Language dismantling much of Obama’s health care law and blocking federal money for Planned Parenthood, which would be certain to draw vetoes.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked House Democrats in a closed-door session Wednesday to hold off on deciding until they had reviewed the bill.
After GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s controversial comments about banning Muslims from entering the U.S., Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger said the pressure increased on the GOP to get the language on Syrian refugees to the spending deal. The tax was created to curb costs in the health care system by discouraging employers from providing overly generous health insurance plans to their workers through a 40% fee on high-end plans.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, meanwhile, touted the deal as being “bipartisan” and “bicameral”.
But Republicans have proposed eligibility restrictions that Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have rejected.
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Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), who said he plans to oppose the spending bill, in part because it does not include refugee security legislation he wrote, did not fault Ryan for negotiating a deal that he – and perhaps most House Republicans – will not support.
