$1.3B budget bill may be voted on today

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders finalized a sweeping $1.3 trillion budget bill Wednesday that substantially boosts military and domestic spending but leaves behind young immigrant “Dreamers,” deprives President Donald Trump of some of his borderwall money and takes only incremental steps to address gun violence.

As negotiators stumbled toward an end-of-theweek deadline to fund the government or face a federal shutdown, House Speaker Paul Ryan dashed to the White House amid concerns that Trump’s support was wavering. The White House later said the president backed the legislation.

Leaders hope to start voting on the bill as soon as Thursday.

Two of the biggest remaining issues had been border-wall funds and a legislative response to gun violence.

On guns, leaders tentatively agreed to tuck in bipartisan provisions to bolster school-safety funds and improve compliance with the criminal background-check system for firearm purchases. The bill states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can do research on gun violence, though not advocacy, an idea Democrats pushed.

But there was no resolution for Dreamers, the young immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally since childhood but whose deportation protections are being challenged in court after Trump tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Trump is now poised to win only $1.6 billion of the $25 billion he sought for barriers along the border, none of it for the new prototypes he recently visited in California. Negotiators also rejected Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new Border Patrol and immigration enforcement agents.

The plan removes an earmark protecting money for a rail tunnel under the Hudson River — a priority for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York that Trump had vowed to veto the bill over. But the project would remain eligible for funding, and a Schumer aide said it was likely to win well more than half of the $900 million sought this year.

Oho’s U.S. senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, said the measure contains full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The Trump administration had proposed essentially eliminated the funding.