Congress gave final approval to a $1.1 trillion spending measure Friday that averts a U.S. government shutdown and ends a 40- year-old ban on crude oil exports, a plan that ensures fiscal peace in Congress through most of 2016.
The House adopted the measure in a 316-11vote and the Senate followed suit with a 65-33 vote in favor,
President Barack Obama plans to sign the measure, which will finance the government through September 2016.
“It advances conservative priorities in several areas and enacts significant reform in several areas, on everything from tax relief to energy policy to cybersecurity," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Thursday. “I plan to vote for it. I hope colleagues will choose to do the same."
The end of the crude oil export ban is a “big win,” according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, and it’s a top priority for Republicans. Democrats call it a giveaway to oil companies, and in exchange they negotiated extensions of environmental measures including solar and wind energy tax credits.
The two measures combined include about $680 billion in revived tax breaks over the next 10 years. A number of them would be made permanent, including those for small business expenses, individual deductions for state and local sales taxes, and financing rules for multinational corporations.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress have fought over taxing and spending for years, causing a 16-day partial government shutdown in 2013 and twice bringing the U.S. to the brink of a potential default on the federal debt. Public opinion polls blamed Republicans for the turmoil, and the party under Ryan -- elected Oct. 29 to replace John Boehner -- wants to avoid a repeat with the 2016 presidential election approaching and show that Republicans can govern.
Vote Drama
The outcome of the House vote on the spending measure was not without drama. Even though Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi backed the plan and urged fellow Democrats to vote for it, she said Thursday she wasn’t confident her party could deliver enough votes to help Ryan get it passed. A number of conservative members of the Republican majority oppose the measure because they say it spends too much money.
"It is going to bust the deficit. We are not doing anything for yet another year to take the debt burden off our kids and grandkids," Republican Representative John Fleming of Louisiana said Thursday.
Conservatives also were unhappy when the final version omitted some policy provisions they wanted, including defunding Planned Parenthood and blocking Syrian refugees from entering the U.S.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican presidential contender, criticized Republican leaders in an opinion article in Politico that said the bill “effectively forfeits our massive Republican victories of 2014 and cements Obama’s priorities for nearly the full remainder of his term."
In a letter Thursday urging fellow Democrats to support the spending bill, Pelosi wrote, "Personally, I was dismayed by Republicans’ insistence on lifting the oil export ban." But she said Republicans’ "desperate thirst for lifting the oil export ban empowered Democrats to win significant concessions throughout the omnibus, including ridding the bill of scores of deeply destructive poison pill riders."
Both Parties Upset
Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the lead Republican pushing oil export legislation in the House, said, "There are a lot of Republicans upset by what is not in the bill, there are a lot of Democrats who are upset because of what is in the bill."
Oil producers, including Continental Resources Inc., Pioneer Natural Resources Co. and ConocoPhillips, have been pressing for an end to restrictions on exports of most raw, unprocessed crude.
The spending measure includes Republican wins such as a provision prohibiting the Securities and Exchange Commission from requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their political contributions.
It would scale back a program that allows visa-free entry to the U.S. for citizens of about three dozen countries, including much of Europe. People who have traveled recently to Iraq, Syria or other countries with significant terrorist activity would have to go through the normal visa process.
Meat Processing
The measure would benefit industries including health care, broadcasting and meat processing, increase funding for the FBI, and boost money for child hunger programs. It would restore health benefits for first responders to the Sept. 11 terror attacks who became sick because of their work, and provide health care aid for cash-strapped Puerto Rico.
The legislation would ratify an International Monetary Fund plan approved in 2010 to increase the voting share of emerging economies and double the amount of permanent funding available to the Washington-based fund. Until now, Republican opposition has prevented the IMF from implementing the changes.
The tax-extension measure passed by the House Thursday would also make permanent an enhanced child tax credit and the earned income tax credit -- both Democratic priorities -- as well as tax breaks for charitable giving and schoolteachers’ expenses.
The two pieces of legislation would suspend three taxes intended to fund the Affordable Care Act -- a so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health insurance plans would be delayed from 2018 to 2020; a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices would be paused in 2016 and 2017; and a fee on health insurers would be paused for 2016.
Not everyone was on board. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said on the Senate floor Thursday that he planned to oppose the bill because of the amount it would add to the federal deficit.
"I cannot stand here and vote for a bill that tells middle- class Americans, students and veterans, doctors and nurses, mothers and fathers and our seniors that these are our values," Manchin said. "I would hope we would all think twice before voting for this absolutely unresponsible, irresponsible piece of legislation that adds another $700 billion to the debt."