House unveils $1.01 trillion measure to fund government
WASHINGTON — House and Senate appropriators on Monday agreed to a $1.01 trillion bipartisan bill to fund the U.S. government through Sept. 30, unveiling the measure days before funding for federal agencies is scheduled to lapse.
The legislation was announced by lawmakers including House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, and Senate Appropriations Chairman Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat. The bill will probably reach the House floor on Jan. 15, Rogers said.
“Not everyone will like everything in this bill, but in this divided government a critical bill such as this simply cannot reflect the wants of only one party,” the lawmakers said in a joint statement. “We believe this is a good, workable measure.”
Lawmakers had agreed on the $1.01 trillion spending level in December as part of a two-year, bipartisan budget agreement. The bill announced tonight would provide funding for individual agencies and avoid a repeat of the 16-day partial government shutdown in October.
Government funding runs out Jan. 15, so lawmakers also plan to pass a separate three-day stopgap bill at current funding levels to push the deadline to Jan. 18. That would give lawmakers enough time to enact the comprehensive bill without risking a government shutdown.
“It’s a really good deal,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican. “The Senate and the House got together in a good way.”
Obamacare Provisions
In an effort to win support from Democrats, House appropriators didn’t include contentious policy provisions such as one blocking President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care law.
Republican efforts to thwart the health-care law were at the center of a spending-bill dispute that caused the 16-day partial government shutdown in October.
“There is nothing in the bill that blocks Obamacare,” Mikulski said. The measure also omits language sought by House Republicans to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
“We tried to keep those political riders out,” said Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Senate Republican appropriator.
Mikulski said negotiators agreed to details on all 12 sections of the bill, avoiding the need to write any of them as stopgap spending measures continuing the prior year’s funding.
Senate Action
The Senate plans to take up and pass the short-term extension once the House sends it over. Any senator could delay passage of either measure for about four days, though no senators have said they will do so.
The 1,582-page bill sets fiscal year 2014 spending at $1.012 trillion, in line with the enacted December budget deal.
The House Rules Committee plans to meet tomorrow to set floor debate procedures for the measure.
Lawmakers struggled to trim more than $25 billion from military spending amid lobbying from defense contractors including Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and General Dynamics Corp. The top customer for each of the top 10 federal contractors was a unit of the Department of Defense, according to a Bloomberg Government compilation of contracting records.
Several lawmakers said that one of the last unresolved issues had been a proposed $63 billion contribution to the International Monetary Fund’s permanent capital fund. The IMF funding wasn’t in the final bill, according to a summary provided by the House Appropriations Committee.
Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, predicted last week that there would be objections to the final spending package “from all across the spectrum” from lawmakers who wanted more cuts and others who wanted fewer spending reductions.