Lawmakers push through stopgap bill
Funds get in for children’s, vets’ health care programs
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Congress passed a temporary spending bill Thursday, just in time to avert a government shutdown, doing the bare minimum in a sprint toward the holidays and punting disputes on immigration, health care and the budget to next year.
The measure passed the House on a 231-188 vote over Democratic opposition and then cleared the Senate 6632, with Democrats from Republican-leaning states providing many of the key votes. All four of Arkansas’ representatives, all Republicans, voted for the measure, as did both of Arkansas’ Republican senators.
President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure, which will keep the government operating until Jan. 19.
The stopgap legislation would keep the government from closing down at midnight. It has traversed a tortuous path, encountering resistance from the GOP’s most ardent allies of the military, as well as opposition from Democrats who demanded but were denied a vote on giving people who were brought to the U.S. as
children and now live here illegally an opportunity to become citizens.
The wrap-up measure allows Republicans controlling Washington to savor their win on this week’s tax-cut package — even as they kick a full lineup of leftover work into the new year. Congress will return in January facing enormous challenges on immigration, the federal budget, health care and national security along with legislation to increase the government’s authority to borrow money.
Each of those items is sure to test the unity that Republicans are enjoying now.
“Now it gets down to some very difficult decisions on how we move forward in the first and second quarter of next year,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, a faction of hard-right Republicans. “There is a lot to do next month. I’m not worried today. I’ll wait until January to be worried, OK?”
Democrats had initially pressed for adding their priorities to the measure, but once rebuffed on immigration they worked to keep the bill mostly free of add-ons, figuring that they’ll hold greater leverage next month.
On Thursday morning, while offering encouragement to pass a spending bill, Trump took a jab at Democrats.
“House Democrats want a SHUTDOWN for the holidays in order to distract from the very popular, just passed, Tax Cuts. House Republicans, don’t let this happen. Pass the C.R. TODAY and keep our Government OPEN!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
But there was some resistance among Republicans, too, mostly from the party’s defense hawks, who had hoped to enact record increases for the military this year and force the Senate to debate a full-year, $658 billion defense spending measure. But that idea was a nonstarter with Senate Democrats, who will agree to Pentagon increases only if domestic programs get a comparable increase.
Another item left out of the temporary spending bill was $81 billion worth of disaster aid, which the House passed Thursday on a bipartisan 251-169 tally but stalled in the Senate.
That measure would have raised this year’s tally for aid to hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean, as well as fire-ravaged California, to more than $130 billion. But both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate want changes, and it was among the items Democrats sought to hold on to for leverage next year.
“Democrats want to make sure that we have equal bargaining, and we’re not going to allow things like disaster relief go forward without discussing some of the other issues we care about,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
Immigration is among the most difficult issues confronting lawmakers in January, thrust upon them in September after Trump rescinded a Barack Obama order giving young illegal aliens protection against deportation, though he gave Congress a March deadline to come up with a legislative solution.
“They embody the best in our nation: patriotism, hard work, perseverance,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California told the chamber’s Rules Committee on Thursday. “We should not leave them to celebrate the holidays in fear.”
Trump and Republicans are pushing for more border security and other immigration steps in exchange.
“The vast majority of Republicans want to see a DACA solution. They just want to see a DACA solution that’s balanced,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by its initials.
Also left unfinished were bipartisan efforts to smash budget limits that are imposing a freeze on the Pentagon and domestic agencies, a long-term extension of the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program for 9 million low-income kids, and Senate legislation aimed at stabilizing health insurance markets.
“At some point we’ve got to make the hard decisions,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.
A FEW ADD-ONS
Lawmakers included in their bill a $2.1 billion fix for an expiring program that pays for veterans to seek care outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system; a temporary fix to ensure states facing shortfalls from the Children’s Health Insurance Program won’t have to purge children from the program; and a short-term extension for an expiring overseas wiretapping program aimed at tracking terrorists.
The Veterans Choice program, which pays for veterans facing barriers to care within the government’s health system to get outside help, stands to benefit from the $2.1 billion. Lawmakers have been trying for months — thus far, unsuccessfully — to reach an agreement to permanently overhaul and fund the program.
As for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the $2.85 billion it was allotted is far less than the five years of funds that congressional leaders had promised, and it is unclear whether those funds will be adequate. Some states had already begun to inform parents that their children could lose coverage early next year if Congress did not act. The bill does not provide the certainty that some state officials had been seeking.
“I do not think this is anywhere close to enough money,” said Bruce Lesley, the president of First Focus, a child advocacy group. “For a $12 billion to $14 billion program, this provides less than $3 billion for what is effectively six months” — the first half of fiscal 2018, which began in October.
Leaders of both parties in the House and the Senate support legislation to provide five years of funds for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, but they have been unable to agree on how to pay for it.
The standoff over the program is remarkable because it has had strong bipartisan support since it was created 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton was president and Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.
The stopgap bill would extend through Jan. 19 a statute that provides the legal basis for the National Security Agency and FBI’s program that deals with surveillance that doesn’t require a warrant, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, which is set to expire Dec. 31. Congress will have to return to the issue of whether to impose new privacy safeguards on that program as part of a longer-term extension.
The bill also contains about $5 billion to upgrade missile defenses to respond to the threat from North Korea and to repair two destroyers damaged in accidents this year in the Pacific.
Finally, it waives a budget rule that would trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and dozens of other federal programs because of the tax overhaul passed this week. The waiver would clear the way for Trump to sign the tax legislation before the end of the year rather than waiting until January.
The tax cut will reduce revenue by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, adding to the federal deficit. That impact triggers a 2010 law that makes automatic spending cuts to Medicare and other programs if lawmakers increase the deficit.
Democrats opposed the GOP tax bill in part because they said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some said they would not help Republicans by passing the waiver — particularly as many Republicans have vowed to target deep spending cuts to social welfare programs next year.
In the Senate, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a fierce advocate for lower federal spending, accused his fellow Republicans of reneging on calls to cut spending and forced a separate vote on the waiver.
“We have a spending problem,” Paul said on the Senate floor, urging colleagues to vote it down. “We have rules to keep spending in check, and we disobey our own rules.”
The waiver passed 91-8, averting the mandatory cuts.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; by Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times; and by Anna Edgerton and Laura Litvan of Bloomberg News; and by Mike DeBonis, Erica Werner, Ed O’Keefe and Damian Paletta of The Washington Post.