U.S. SENATE HOPES VETS BILL WILL BE FIRST STEP

Could help avoid big budget bill in the fall

WASHINGTON — The Senate yesterday approved a $145 billion spending bill to fund the Energy Department and veterans’ programs for the next budget year.

The 86-5 vote in favor of the bill sends it back to the House, which approved a similar bill this month. Lawmakers hope to send a unified bill to President Trump as the first of what they hope will be a series of spending bills signed into law before the new budget year begins Oct. 1.

Individual spending measures have routinely been delayed or ignored in recent years in favor of giant spending packages — often months overdue — that fund the entire government.

GOP leaders are anxious to avoid another massive spending bill as the midterm elections approach. Trump has pledged he won’t sign another catchall measure such as the $1.3 trillion bill he signed in March.

The three-bill bundle approved includes a $5.1 billion increase for the Department of Veterans Affairs, including $1.1 billion to pay for a law Trump signed earlier this month to give veterans more freedom to see doctors outside the troubled VA system.

The bill includes

$43.8 billion for energy and water programs, including programs to ensure nuclear stockpile readiness and spur innovation in energy research.

The bill also funds flood-control projects and addresses regional ports and waterways.

Lawmakers focused less on those details than on the vote itself, calling early approval of a spending bill the beginning of a return to “regular order” that has eluded Congress for years.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said senators were “doing what the Senate is supposed to do” — propose bills, debate them and then vote them up or down. Too often, he said, being a senator is “like joining the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he hoped the bill’s passage signals Senate approval of all 12 spending bills by the end of September.

“It is my hope that we will not be led astray down the path of delay and partisanship that results in yet another omnibus,” Shelby said, using a congressional term for the catch-all spending bill. “That is no way to fund the government.”