Extension
For business, there’s a seven-year extension of the charter of the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance transactions benefiting US exporters, as well as a renewal of the government’s terrorism risk insurance program. The financially troubled government flood insurance program would be extended through September, as would several visa programs for both skilled and seasonal workers.
Labor won repeal of the so-called Cadillac tax, a 40% tax on high-cost employer health plans, which was originally intended to curb rapidly growing healthcare spending. But it disproportionately affected high-end plans won under union contracts, and Democratic labor allies had previously succeeded in temporary repeals.
Democrats controlling the House won increased funding for early childhood education and a variety of other domestic programs. They also won higher Medicaid funding for the cash-poor government of Puerto Rico, which is struggling to recover from hurricane devastation and a resulting economic downturn.
While Republicans touted defense hikes and Democrats reeled off numerous increases for domestic programs, most of the provisions of the spending bill enjoy bipartisan support, including increases for medical research, combating the opioid epidemic, and Head Start and childcare grants to states.
Democrats also secured $425 million for states to upgrade their election systems, and they boosted the US Census budget $1.4 billion above Trump’s request. They won smaller increases for the Environmental Protection Agency, renewable energy programs and affordable housing.
“We are scaling up funding for priorities that will make our country safer and stronger and help hardworking families get ahead,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.
The outcome in the latest chapter in the longstanding battle over Trump’s border wall awards Trump with $1.4 billion for new barriers - equal to last year’s appropriation - while preserving Trump’s ability to use his budget powers to tap other accounts for several times that amount. That’s a blow for liberal opponents of the wall but an acceptable trade-off for pragmatic-minded Democrats who wanted to gain $27 billion in increases for domestic programs and avert the threat of simply funding the government on autopilot.