WASHINGTON (AP) — The sales job is on for a bipartisan
$1.1 trillion spending bill that would pay for the operations of
government through October and finally put to rest the bitter budget
battles of last year.
The massive measure contains a dozens of
trade-offs between Democrats and Republicans as it fleshes out the
details of the budget deal that Congress passed last month. That pact
gave relatively modest but much-sought relief to the Pentagon and
domestic agencies after deep budget cuts last year.
The GOP-led House is slated to pass the 1,582-page bill Wednesday, though many tea party conservatives
are sure to oppose it.
Democrats
pleased with new money to educate preschoolers and build high-priority
highway projects are likely to make up the difference even as Republican
social conservatives fret about losing familiar battles over abortion
policy.
The bill would avert spending cuts that threatened
construction of new aircraft carriers and next-generation Joint Strike
Fighters. It maintains rent subsidies for the poor, awards federal
civilian and military workers a 1 percent raise and beefs up security at
U.S. embassies across the globe. The Obama administration would be
denied money to meet its full commitments to the International Monetary
Fund but get much of the money it wanted to pay for implementation of
the new health care law and the 2010 overhaul of financial regulations.
"This
agreement shows the American people that we can compromise, and that we
can govern," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara
Mikulski, D-Md. "It puts an end to shutdown, slowdown, slamdown
politics."
The House vote is expected less than 48 hours after the
measure became public, even though Republicans promised a 72-hour
review period for legislation during their campaign to take over the
House in 2010.
On Tuesday, the House is slated to approve a
short-term funding bill to extend the Senate’s deadline to finish the
overall spending bill until midnight Saturday. The current short-term
spending bill expires at midnight Wednesday evening.
The measure
doesn’t contain in-your face victories for either side. The primary
achievement was that there was an agreement in the first place after the
collapse of the budget process last year, followed by a 16-day
government shutdown and another brush with a disastrous default on U.S.
obligations. After the shutdown and debt crisis last fall, House Budget
committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Committee
Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., struck an agreement to avoid a repeat of
the 5 percent cut applied to domestic agencies last year and to prevent
the Pentagon from absorbing about $20 billion in new cuts on top of the
ones that hit it last year.
White House budget director Sylvia
Mathews Burwell says the measure is a "positive step" because it
"unwinds some of the damaging cuts caused by sequestration, ensures the
continuation of critical services the American people depend on, and
brings us closer to returning the budget process to regular order." She
also praised investments in early childhood education and
infrastructure.
To be sure, there is plenty for both parties to
oppose in the legislation. Conservatives face a vote to finance
implementation of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and Wall
Street regulations, both enacted in 2010 over solid Republican
opposition. A conservative-backed initiative to block the Environmental
Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions was dumped
overboard and social conservatives failed to win new restrictions on
abortion.
Democrats must accept new money for abstinence education
programs they often ridicule, and conservatives can take heart that
overall spending for daily agency operations has been cut by $79
billion, or 7 percent, from the high-water mark established by Democrats
in 2010. That cut increases to $165 billion, or 13 percent, when cuts
in war funding and disaster spending are accounted for. Money for
Obama’s high-speed rail program would be cut off, and rules restricting
the sale of less efficient incandescent light bulbs would be blocked.
Democrats
are more likely to climb aboard than tea party Republicans, but only
after voting to give Obama about $6 billion more in Pentagon war funding
than the $79 billion he requested. The additional war money is helping
the Pentagon deal with a cash crunch in troop readiness accounts.
Including foreign aid related to overseas security operations, total war
funding reaches $92 billion, a slight cut from last year.
At the
same time, the bill is laced with sweeteners. One is a provision
exempting disabled veterans and war widows from a pension cut enacted
last month. The bill contains increases for veterans’ medical care
backed by both sides and fully funds the $6.7 billion budget for food
aid for low-income pregnant women and their children.
Yet the
National Institutes of Health’s proposed budget of $29.9 billion falls
short of the $31 billion budget it won when Democrats controlled
Congress. Democrats won a $100 million increase, to $600 million, for
so-called TIGER grants for high-priority transportation infrastructure
projects, a program that started with the 2009 stimulus bill.
The
spending bill would spare the Pentagon from a brutal second-wave cut of
$20 billion in additional reductions on top of last year’s $34 billion
sequestration cut, which forced furloughs of civilian employees and
harmed training and readiness accounts.
Consistent with recent
defense measures, the bill largely fulfills the Pentagon’s request for
ships, aircraft, tanks, helicopters and other war-fighting equipment,
including 29 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, eight new warships as
requested by the Navy, and a variety of other aircraft like the V-22
Osprey, new and improved F-18 fighters and new Army helicopters.
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