A massive $1.1 trillion spending bill to fund the government through October and finally put to rest the bitter budget battles of last year is getting generally positive reviews from House Republicans eager to avoid another shutdown crisis with elections looming in 10 months.
Veteran Republicans said the generally positive response to the all-encompassing spending bill reflected the desire of the rank and file to avoid a repeat of the politically damaging budget standoffs with the White House that led to last year's 16-day partial government shutdown. The government closure sent congressional approval numbers plummeting and roughed up Republicans in particular. They've regained support amid the troubled rollout of President Barack Obama's health care law.
"The shutdown educated — particularly our younger members who weren't here during our earlier shutdown — about how futile that practice is," said House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky. "There is a real hard determination now that we will reacquire and use the power of the purse that the Congress constitutionally has been given."
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said the bill would get "our country off this notion of shutting the government down" and would allow Republicans to "keep the spotlight on some other issues that affect the other side that we think are very important," a reference to the health care law that's weighing politically on Democrats.
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.
Western Republicans from timber country were anxious about a cutoff of funding of federal payments in lieu of taxes to towns surrounded by federal lands but were reassured that the payments would be extended though separate legislation. Gulf Coast lawmakers praised a provision aimed at delaying federal flood insurance premium increases from new flood maps that have proven faulty, but the provision left in place other reforms enacted in 2012.
The GOP-led House is slated to pass the 1,582-page bill Wednesday, though some 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 — a defeat for California Democrats — 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.
It also contains a longstanding provision blocking the Postal Service from ending Saturday mail delivery and closing rural post offices, a rule that's taking on greater importance as Congress contemplates cost-cutting steps for the post office.
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