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 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 2,200-page melange 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.
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U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, said the budget deal struck in Congress on Wednesday includes several wins for Southwest Washington.
Herrera Beutler is still studying the colossal legislation, but it includes a directive to require the Department of Veterans Affairs to update Congress on progress reducing wait times and lowering staff turnover. Veterans in Southwest Washington continue to wait too long to see health care providers, Herrera Beutler said.
The measure also provides increased resources for fighting wildfires and for more firefighting equipment. The measure maintains federal timber payments made to rural communities to help supplement their tax base.
“Like any large piece of legislation, this bill has its shortcomings, and Jaime will continue to examine it before she votes on it this Friday,” Amy Pennington, a spokeswoman for Herrera Beutler, wrote in an email.
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“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.
Indeed, few ringing endorsements could be heard from either side for the sprawling package.
Despite pledges by Ryan to run a different kind of House after his predecessor, John Boehner, was ousted by conservatives angered over last-minute, dead-of-night compromises with Democrats, the new GOP speaker found himself asking lawmakers to endorse a huge, eleventh-hour deal of his own. It’s stuffed with special interest goodies, presents for powerful lawmakers and provisions of obscure origin benefiting everyone from race car owners and many others.
He pledged to do better next year. And most Republican lawmakers appeared happy to give him the benefit of the doubt and say goodbye to a roller coaster of a year that included a near-shutdown of the Homeland Security Department and Boehner’s chaotic ouster.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the package “a good compromise.” But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 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 package.
After years of trying, Republicans claimed wins by making permanent business tax breaks for research and development and for buying new equipment.
Democrats got permanent extensions of tax credits for college costs, children and lower-income families.
