Sides see victories in budget talks
WASHINGTON — Top-level congressional talks on a $1.3 trillion catchall spending bill are reaching a critical stage as negotiators confront immigration, abortion-related issues and a battle over a rail project that pits President Donald Trump against his most powerful Democratic adversary.
The bipartisan measure is loaded with victories for both sides. Republicans and Trump are winning a longsought budget increase for the Pentagon while Democrats obtain funding for infrastructure, the opioid crisis and a wide swath of domestic programs.
The bill would implement last month’s big budget agreement, providing 10 percent increases for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies when compared with current levels. Coupled with last year’s tax cut measure, it heralds the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits as soon as the budget year starting in October.
While most of the funding issues have been sorted out, fights involving a number of policy “riders” — so named because they catch a ride on a spending bill — continued into the weekend. Among them are GOP-led efforts to add a plan to revive federal subsidies to help the poor cover out-ofpocket costs under President Barack Obama’s health law and to fix a glitch in the recent tax bill that subsidizes grain sales to cooperatives at the expense of for-profit grain companies.
Trump has privately threatened to veto the whole package if a $900 million payment is made on the Hudson River Gateway Project, a priority of top Senate Democrat Charles Schumer of New York. Trump’s opposition is alarming northeastern Republicans such as Gateway supporter Peter King, R-N.Y., who lobbied Trump on the project at a St. Patrick’s luncheon in the Capitol on Thursday.
The Gateway Project would add an $11 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River to complement deteriorating, century-old tunnels that are at risk of closing in a few years. It enjoys bipartisan support.
Most House Republicans voted to kill the funding in a tally last year, however, preferring to see the money spread to a greater number of districts.
“Obviously, if we’re doing a huge earmark … it’s troubling,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., a leader of House conservatives. “Why would we do that? Schumer’s pet project and we pass that under a Republican-controlled Senate, House and White House?”
There’s also a continuing battle over Trump’s long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall. While Trump traveled to California on Tuesday to inspect prototypes for the wall, what’s pending now is $1.6 billion for earlier designs involving sections in Texas that double as levees and 14 miles of replacement fencing in San Diego.
Meanwhile, a White House trial balloon to trade additional years of wall funding for a temporary reprieve for illegal aliens brought to the country as children — commonly called “Dreamers” — landed with a thud earlier this month.
Republicans are holding firm against a provision by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., designed to make sure that Planned Parenthood receives a lion’s share of federal family planning grants.