Lawmakers are “99 percent” finished with massive spending and tax deal that will lift the ban on crude oil exports, but legislation may not be filed until midnight Tuesday.
The $1.1 trillion fiscal 2016 spending deal and a $500 billion tax cut package were to be outlined at a House GOP conference meeting Tuesday night, with a vote on the two bills as early as Thursday.
The House and Senate will pass a stopgap spending bill that funds the government past a Wednesday deadline, possibly until Dec. 22, which will give the Senate time to take up the legislation after the House.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., said Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate had completed “99 percent” of a deal and he hopes the bill language can be filed tonight.
According to other lawmakers, the two sides are still in conflict over provisions related to the House Financial Services Committee.
The bill does not include many of the policy riders Republicans had hoped to usher into law with the spending and tax bills.
Republican negotiators agreed to drop language that would have greatly heightened the scrutiny of incoming Syrian and Iraqi refugees, for example, replacing it with a visa waiver reform provision.
But Republicans were able to win on oil, inserting a provision that would lift the 1970s ban on exporting crude oil. Lawmakers also won permanent extension of some of the tax cuts.
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla, called the oil export provision, “a huge, huge, get” for the GOP, but added many Republicans will be unhappy that more policy riders will not be included.
“I think they will probably be disappointed on the rider front,” Cole said.
As of Tuesday evening, House Appropriations staff were hard at work writing the legislative text, which will be thousands of pages long. It’s a huge undertaking that could delay filing of the bill until midnight or possibly later, an aide said.
“The technical aspects of putting together a bill of this size take a long time,” the aide said.
