The House Friday passed a $1.1 trillion bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, even though more than a third of Republicans voted against it and said it falls short of their demands to rein in the Obama administration.
The bill passed after considerable arm-twisting by both Republicans and Democrats, whose leaders cobbled together the deal with President Obama over the past several weeks.
But in the end, it passed easily in a 316-113 vote, despite fears early in the week about passing the bill. Senate passage was expected to follow later in the day Friday.
While the big fear was getting Republicans on board, nearly two-thirds of GOP members voted for it — Republicans voted 150-95 on the measure. And it was an easy choice for Democrats, who voted 166-18 in favor of the deal.
Because of the bipartisan terms of the accord, the measure would not have passed the GOP-led Congress without considerable help from Democrats. The bill had garnered significant conservative opposition that only seemed to escalate after Republican lawmakers had time to review the more than 2,000 pages of text that GOP leaders released at 2 a.m. on Tuesday.
The bill includes money for resettling illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border and an increase in the cap on visas for low-skilled foreigners. And it doesn’t include other language favored by the GOP, including proposals to strip federal dollars from Planned Parenthood, and halt the Syrian refugee resettlement program. The bill also dropped provisions that would roll back EPA regulations that the GOP opposes.
Conservative were already opposed to the spending levels set in the fall by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who retired in October. Boehner negotiated an agreement that raised spending beyond budgetary caps by $50 billion in 2016 and $30 billion more in 2017.
But House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., touted GOP provisions in the bill, in particular lifting the crude oil export ban, which Republicans had been seeking for years. He said the deal had to include Democratic provisions in order to become law.
“Today, the House came together to ensure our government is open and working for the American people,” he said after the vote. “This bipartisan compromise secures meaningful wins for Republicans and the American people, such as the repeal of the outdated, anti-growth ban on oil exports. The legislation strengthens our military and protects Americans from terrorist threats, while limiting the overreach of intrusive government bureaucracies like the IRS and the EPA.”
On the Democratic side, lawmakers were angry about a Republican provision to lift the 1970’s ban on crude oil exports. They also protested a decision by Republicans to exclude language that would have allowed debt-ridden Puerto Rico to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., announced their support for the measure late Thursday and worked to rally their rank-and-file to back the bill with memos pointing out the Democratic wins. The victories included a five-year extension of tax credits for renewable energy that Pelosi said “will eliminate around ten times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add.”
Both Pelosi and Ryan worked to assure Democrats that even though Puerto Rico bankruptcy protection was excluded from the spending bill, Congress would consider legislation in January. Ryan sent out a memo earlier this week promising legislative solutions by March and on Friday, Pelosi told Democrats Ryan has promised a hearing on the issue in January.
To stress that promise, Pelosi took to the House floor just before the vote and reminded lawmakers that legislation to help Puerto Rico was on the way.
She said the inability to vote today on Puerto Rico language “only adds to the urgency of our acting by March 31, 2016, as the speaker indicated and also indicated that hearings on this important legislation would begin on our first day back.”
