Congress OKs spending bill, Zika money

WASHINGTON — Congress is sending President Barack Obama a bill to keep the government operating through Dec. 9 and provide $1.1 billion in long-delayed funding to battle the Zika virus.

The House cleared the measure by a 342-85 vote just hours after a bipartisan Senate tally. The votes came after top congressional leaders broke through a stalemate over aid to help Flint, Mich., address its water crisis. Top Republicans gave renewed guarantees that Flint will get funding later this year to help rid its water system of lead.

The hybrid spending measure was Capitol Hill’s last

A Utah man died in June from Zika, marking the first Zika-related death in the continental U.S.

major to-do item before the election.

The bill caps months of wrangling over money to fight the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The spending bill also includes $500 million for rebuilding assistance to flood-ravaged Louisiana and other states.

Both the House and Senate also overrode President Barack Obama’s veto of legislation to allow families of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia for its alleged backing of the attackers, handing him the first veto override of his presidency.

Congress won’t return to Washington until the week after Election Day.

The deal averts a potential federal shutdown and comes just three days before the midnight deadline.

It defuses a lengthy, frustrating battle over Zika spending, providing funds to fight the virus and its spread as new details are emerging about the mysterious Zika case in Utah, where a son caring for his sick father became infected with the virus.

The father’s death in June was the first related to Zika in the continental United States. His son’s infection was unusual because, unlike all other known adult cases, he had not traveled to a Zika-infected region or had sex with a partner who had done so.

Democrats also claimed a partial victory on Flint while the GOP-dominated Louisiana delegation won a down-payment on Obama’s $2.6 billion request for their state.

The politicking and power plays enormously complicated what should have been a routine measure to avoid an election-eve government shutdown.

The temporary government-wide spending bill stalled in the Senate earlier Tuesday over Democrats’ demands that the measure include $220 million in Senate-passed funding to help Flint and other cities deal with lead-tainted water. Democrats said they were not willing to accept a promise that Flint funding would come after the election, but by Wednesday, top Democrats like Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to address the water crisis in the separate water development bill.

The Senate version of the water measure passed earlier this month, and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell on Wednesday gave renewed assurances that the more generous Senate Flint measure would prevail. The House measure authorizes aid to Flint, but the actual money didn’t come until the final House-Senate version of water measure passed in the post-election lame duck session.

Democrats had argued it’s unfair that the water crisis in Flint has gone on for more than a year with no assistance, while Louisiana and other states are getting $500 million for floods that occurred just last month. Democrats have played a strong hand in the negotiations and had leverage because Republicans controlling the House and Senate were eager to avoid a shutdown some six weeks before the election.

Many House Republicans have resisted helping Flint, arguing that the city’s problems are a local issue and that many cities have problems with aging water systems.

Flint’s drinking water became tainted when the city, then under state control, began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. Regulators failed to ensure the water was treated properly and lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply. As many as 12,000 children have been exposed to lead in water, officials say.

Charges of racism and campaign-season antagonism between Republicans and Democrats had slowed efforts to pass the spending measure. Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee, Flint’s congressman, accused Republicans of ignoring the plight of impoverished, predominantly black Flint residents after Republicans would not permit a vote on a Senate aid package to deliver the money now.

But Wednesday morning Kildee issued a statement that called the vote on the non-binding, $170 million promise for Flint “a step forward to ensuring that Flint families get the resources they need to recover from this crisis.” The $220 million Senate measure, which passed this month, earmarked $120 million for Flint.

The amendment represents a bipartisan agreement authorizing the funding, but the actual money would await the final House-Senate version of the bill after the November election.

The spending bill also includes full-year funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

McConnell has made numerous concessions in weeks of negotiations, agreeing, for instance, to drop contentious provisions tied to Zika funding that led Democrats to block prior Zika measures. A provision to make Planned Parenthood ineligible for new anti-Zika funding for Puerto Rico was dropped, as was a provision to ease pesticide regulations under the Clean Water Act. Democrats relented on a $400 million package of spending cuts.