PREZ TRUMP’S VICTORY ON US-MEXICO BORDER FENCE
The Democratic-controlled House voted Tuesday to pass a USD 1.4 trillion government-wide spending package, handing President Donald Trump a victory on his US-Mexico border fence while giving Democrats spending increases across a swath of domestic programmes.
The hard-fought legislation also funds a record Pentagon budget and is serving as a must-pass legislative locomotive to tow an unusually large haul of unrelated provisions into law, including an expensive repeal of Obama-era taxes on high-cost health plans, help for retired coal miners, and an increase from 18 to 21 in nationwide legal age to buy tobacco products.
The two-bill package, some 2,371 pages long after additional tax provisions were folded in on Tuesday morning, was unveiled Monday afternoon and adopted less than 24 hours later as lawmakers prepared to wrap up reams of unfinished work against a backdrop of Wednesday's vote on impeaching President Donald Trump.
The House first passed a measure funding domestic programmes on a 297-120 vote. But one-third of the Democrats
defected on a 280-138 vote on the second bill, which funds the military and the Department of Homeland Security, mostly because it funds Trump's border wall project.
The spending legislation would forestall a government shutdown this weekend and give Trump steady funding for his US-Mexico border fence, a move that frustrated Hispanic Democrats and party liberals.
The year-end package is anchored by a USD 1.4 trillion spending measure that caps a difficult, months-long battle over spending priorities.
The mammoth measure made public Monday takes a split-the-differences approach that's a product of divided power in Washington, offering lawmakers of all stripes plenty to vote for and against.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, was a driving force, along with administration pragmatists such as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who negotiated the summertime budget deal that it implements.
The White House Tuesday that Trump sign the measure.
"The president is poised to sign it and to keep the government open," said top White House adviser Kellyanne Conway. said will
Russia on Wednesday lifted the veil on its tightly guarded space-based missile warning system, ahead of a vote in the US Congress on President Donald Trump's plan to create a new space force.
The new system, named Kupol or dome, is designed to detect launches of ballistic missiles and track them to their landing site, according to documents presented by the general staff to military attaches and visible in photographs on the defence ministry website.
As part of the programme, three warning satellites called Tundra have already been put into orbit, starting from 2015.
Kupol's exact configuration is not known but it has positioned itself as equivalent to the US surveillance system SBIRS.
General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, said the latest satellites had "significantly increased Russia's capacity to ensure detection of launches and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
He spoke at a defence ministry briefing a day after US Congress approved a $738 billion (664 billion euro) spending bill to create the new space force, which is under the control of the air force.
Russia has had space forces since 2015 which are also integrated with its air force and largely tasked with anti-missile defence.
The year-end package is anchored by a USD 1.4 trillion spending measure that caps a difficult, months-long battle over spending priorities.