Congress sends $1.3T spending bill to Trump
WASHINGTON — A massive federal spending bill to avert a government shutdown through the end of September cleared the U.S. House on Thursday, but the legislation doesn’t include a longterm solution for young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents.
New Mexico’s entire House delegation — Democratic Reps. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Ben Ray Luján, and Republican Rep. Steve Pearce — voted against the $1.3 trillion bill that funds the military, social programs and a wide range of other government operations. The Senate approved the spending bill early Friday morning, sending the measure to President Donald Trump and averting a weekend federal shutdown.
The White House has indicated Trump would sign the bill, although he complained in a tweet Wednesday that he “had to waste money on Dem giveaways” on social and domestic programs to gain support for military spending increases. The bill includes $1.6 billion for Trump’s proposed border wall. He had asked for $25 billion.
Luján and Lujan Grisham, chairwoman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, both cited the bill’s lack of language addressing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, President Donald Trump canceled, and which expired March 1, as a key reason they opposed the legislation. Although the Department of Homeland Security is not accepting new DACA applications, it is processing renewals.
Lujan Grisham said the bill “fails to protect 800,000 ‘Dreamers,’ fails to stabilize the health care system, fails to safeguard the solvency of our broken pension system, and fails to address gun violence reform in any meaningful way.”
Luján blasted the process. “After months of inaction and temporary spending bills, Republicans introduced this massive funding bill late last night, gave members of Congress less than 24 hours to read over 2,000 pages, and allowed only two hours of debate on the floor of the House of Representatives,” Lujan said. “This isn’t how governing is supposed to work.”
Pearce also criticized the way the bill came to the floor and said the measure “wastes taxpayer dollars without providing real solutions to problems in our health care system, infrastructure, financial system, and national security.”
“This is no way to operate the federal government,” Pearce said.
Pearce and Lujan Grisham are both running for governor of New Mexico this year.
According to The Associated Press, the bill includes $4.6 billion in total funding to fight the nation’s opioid addiction epidemic, a $3 billion increase. More than $2 billion would go to strengthen school safety through grants for training, security measures and treatment for the mentally ill. Medical research at the National Institutes of Health, a longstanding bipartisan priority, would receive a record $3 billion increase, to $37 billion.
Funding was also included for election security ahead of the 2018 midterms. Child care and development block grants would receive a $2.4 billion increase, to $5.2 billion. Head Start for preschoolers would get a $610 million boost, and an additional $2.4 billion would go for child care grants.