Senate taking up $1.1T bill to keep gov’t running
House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. walks with staff through on Capitol Hill in Washington Friday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Banking Committee, joins other lawmakers in the rush to the Senate floor on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday for a procedural vote to advance the $585 billion defense bill.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama praised the huge $1.1 trillion spending bill that will soon be before the Senate, calling it a classic compromise produced by divided government.
“This legislation allows us to build on the economic progress and the national security progress that’s important,” Obama said Friday of the massive measure that would fund every corner of government. Still, he said, “Had I been able to draft my own legislation and get it passed without any Republican votes I suspect it’d be slightly different.”
Obama’s remarks at the White House came as the legislation headed for a final-passage vote in the Senate. In the meantime, a battle was shaping up between Senate veterans and new-breed freshmen including tea partyer Ted Cruz and liberal Elizabeth Warren.
Cruz and Warren each boast a national following, but the smart money is on Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the old-school lawmakers who steer the Senate.
Once Reid and McConnell forge an alliance, passage is only a matter of time.
“It’s a compromise. That’s what legislation is all about,” Reid said as he urged senators to overcome their various objections and get the bill passed Friday to ensure that nearly all the government can stay open through September.
Still, liberals including Warren, D-Mass., and conservatives such as Cruz, R-Texas, will make their points. Warren strongly opposes a provision of the spending bill that loosens rules on banks, while Cruz is incensed that the measure doesn’t block the president’s plan to deport fewer immigrants.
The bill passed the House late Thursday after a day of drama but by a relatively comfortable 219-206 vote. The vote came after GOP leaders sent the House into a seven-hour recess to give the White House time to lobby Democrats angry that the measure weakens rules on trading risky financial products known as derivatives and allows wealthy donors to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into political parties.
In the end, 57 House Democrats voted for the bill, including two of the party’s top three leaders. Democrats argued that there was too much good in the bill to scuttle it and get a worse deal next year when Republicans seize control of the Senate.
“Hold your nose and make this a better world,” Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., said.
The measure would fund nearly every Cabinet agency through September 2015, awarding increases for health research, securities regulation, processing a backlog of rape kits and foreign aid. Republicans won cuts to the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency. The 1,764-page bill is thick with carefully negotiated trade-offs on spending and policy “riders” on the environment, abortion and the lead content of ammunition. Democrats succeeded in getting the most politically toxic riders off the legislation.
Reid said he hopes the measure will clear the Senate for Obama’s signature on Friday, though a vote may not come until the weekend. A temporary funding bill expires at midnight Saturday.
Hours before the vote, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California delivered a rare public rebuke of Obama, saying she was “enormously disappointed” he had decided to embrace legislation that she described as an attempt at blackmail by Republicans. But Pelosi never lobbied Democrats to kill the bill, and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland and No. 3 Democrat Jim Clyburn of South Carolina were a steadying force in support of the measure.
Republicans, meanwhile, limited their defections to 67, mostly conservatives seeking an immediate confrontation with Obama over his moves to relax enforcement of immigration laws. Others simply refuse to vote for spending bills.
But Republicans scored many wins in the legislation, seizing on new leverage gained after their sweep in last month’s midterm elections.
One provision particularly galling to many Democrats would relax new bank regulations that force riskier trades in financial instruments known as derivatives into separate affiliates unprotected by deposit insurance.
The White House stated its own objections to the bank-related proposal and other portions of the bill in a written statement. Even so, officials said Obama and Vice President Joe Biden both telephoned Democrats to secure the votes needed for passage, and the president stepped away from a White House Christmas party reception line to make last-minute calls.
The spending measure was one of a handful on the year-end agenda, with the others including an extension of expiring tax breaks and a bill approving Obama’s policy for arming Syrian forces fighting Islamic State forces. A bill extending the government’s terrorism insurance backstop could get tripped up by procedural hurdles.
A provision in the big bill relating to financially failing multiemployer pension plans would allow controversial cuts for current retirees, and supporters said it was part of an effort to prevent a slow-motion collapse of a system that provides retirement income to millions.
“The multiemployer pension system is a ticking time bomb,” said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., who negotiated the agreement with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who is retiring after 40 years in Congress.