Parties embrace year-end bill
Budget deal combines more than $1 trillion in spending with cuts
WASHINGTON — The White House and lawmakers of both parties grudgingly embraced a massive governmentwide budget deal Wednesday combining more than a trillion dollars in year-end spending with hundreds of billions in tax cuts for businesses, families and special interests of every kind. Leaders planned to push it to final passage by week’s end and quickly adjourn for the holidays, ending a tumultuous year on Capitol Hill.
The sprawling package will keep federal agencies funded through Sept. 30 of next year, staving off a government shutdown that was to begin next Tuesday at midnight under the latest in a series of short-term spending bills, this one passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on Wednesday.
“In divided government, you don’t get everything you want,” new House Speaker Paul Ryan said of the 2,200page mélange of wins and losses for both parties.
“I think everybody can point to something that gives them a reason to be in favor of both of these bills.”
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest sounded a similar note, saying Obama would sign the package despite elements opposed by the administration.
Those include a GOP provision lifting the 40-year-old ban on exporting crude oil from the U.S. and delays and suspensions of several taxes to pay for Obama’s health care law.
“The president is pleased with the final product, even if it does reflect the kind of compromise that’s necessary when you have a Democratic president negotiating with large majorities of Republicans,” Earnest said.
“There’s a whole variety of things in there I define as very positive,” GOP Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma said after emerging from a closed-door meeting where Ryan pitched the deal.
“Let the other side spin it however they want. I think the votes come together to pass it, and I get to go to my mother-in-law’s Saturday morning.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the package “a good compromise.” But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was among those expressing outright opposition, arguing that the package of tax breaks estimated to cost $680 billion over the next decade was too heavily weighted toward corporations and “practically an immorality.”
Yet House Democrats’ opposition to the tax package was expected. Republican leaders expressed confidence Pelosi would nonetheless deliver the majority of votes needed to pass the $1.15 trillion spending bill, leaving it to GOP lawmakers to provide the bulk of votes on the tax package under a widely accepted calculus allowing certain numbers of lawmakers to defect on each piece in the House without threatening the overall package.
After years of trying, Republicans claimed wins by making permanent business tax breaks for research and development and for buying new equipment.