Spending bill deal pared to avoid tough issues

WASHINGTON — Battles over government-wide spending priorities were mostly settled by late Monday, leaving a scaled-back plan for President Donald Trump’s border wall and a rail project that pits Trump against Capitol Hill’s most powerful Democrat as the top issues to be solved.

An agreement could be announced as early as today.

Efforts to include immigration issues and rapidly rising health insurance premiums appeared to be faltering.

Capitol Hill Democrats rejected a White House bid to extend protections for socalled Dreamer immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats appeared likely to yield on $1.6 billion in wall funding, Trump’s official request for the 2018 budget year, but they were digging in against Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new immigration agents.

A dispute over abortion seemed likely to scuttle a Senate GOP plan to provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health insurance premium increases.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was working on Trump’s behalf against funding for a Hudson River tunnel and rail project that’s important to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republicans from New York and New Jersey.

Monday’s developments were described by several lawmakers — as well as congressional aides in both parties who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks remain secretive.

Action is needed by midnight Friday to avert another government shutdown.

The bill would implement last month’s budget agreement, providing 10 percent increases for the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

Trump has told two Republican senators that he supports adding proposals to the bill that would provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health care premium increases.

Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Susan Collins of Maine spoke to Trump for an hour on Saturday in a call initiated by the two lawmakers, the sources said.

Alexander and Collins are among Republicans backing proposals to revive payments to insurers that Trump halted last fall that reimburse the carriers for reducing out-of-pocket costs for many low-earning customers.

The plans are in trouble because Democrats oppose GOP provisions that would forbid the federal payments from being used to help pay for insurance policies that provide abortion.

Efforts to use the measure as a vehicle to extend protections for young people protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program appeared likely to fail, aides said.