Congress stabilizes as spending bill deadline looms

WASHINGTON — Battles over priorities in a huge government-wide spending bill are essentially settled, leaving a scaled-back plan for President Donald Trump’s border wall and a huge rail project that pits Trump against Capitol Hill’s most powerful Democrat as the top issues to be solved.

A hoped-for agreement didn’t materialize overnight but could be announced as early as Tuesday.

The measure would provide major funding increases for the Pentagon — $80 billion over current limits — bringing the military budget to $700 billion and giving GOP defense hawks a long-sought victory. Domestic accounts would get a generous 10 percent increase on average as well, awarding Democrats funding wins that eluded them during the Obama administration.

“We made a promise to the country that we would rebuild our military. Aging equipment, personnel shortages, training lapses, maintenance lapses — all of this has cost us,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. “With this week’s critical funding bill we will begin to reverse that damage.”

Efforts to tackle politically charged immigration issues and rapidly rising health insurance premiums appeared to be faltering.

An effort to extend protections for so-called Dreamer immigrants brought to the country illegally appears to have failed. Democrats seemed likely to yield on $1.6 billion in wall funding for older designs as outlined in Trump’s official request for the 2018 budget year, but they were digging in against Trump’s plans to hire hundreds of new immigration agents.

A dispute over abortion seemed likely to scuttle a Senate GOP plan to provide billions in federal subsidies to insurers to help curb health insurance premium increases.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was working on Trump’s behalf against funding for a Hudson River tunnel and rail project that’s important to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republicans from New York and New Jersey.

House and Senate action is needed by midnight Friday to avert another government shutdown.

The bill would implement last month’s budget agreement, adding $143 billion over limits set under a 2011 budget and debt pact that forced automatic budget cuts on annual agency appropriations. Coupled with last year’s tax cuts, it heralds the return of trillion-dollar budget deficits as soon as the budget year starting in October.

Republican conservatives are dismayed by the free-spending measure, meaning Democratic votes are required to pass it. That gave Democrats leverage to force GOP negotiators to drop numerous policy riders that Democrats considered poison pills.

“We’ve had at least 100 that we’ve taken out,” said Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.