House passes $1.4 trillion spending bill with Trump support that would gut key parts of Affordable Care Act

The package passed in two pieces, one focused on GOP national security priorities including the Pentagon, the other on domestic agencies dear to Democrats such as the Health and Human Services Department. The vote on the national security package was 280-138. The vote on the domestic agencies was 297-120.

The year-end legislative frenzy, which came just one day before the House votes on the impeachment of President Trump, showed how far both parties have moved. The legislation would add close to $50 billion in new spending, even though the White House and Republicans called for major spending cuts earlier in the year. The package would also strip back parts of the Affordable Care Act, legislation that many Democrats believe serves as a defining moment of the Obama administration. The ACA taxes that were cut, however, were controversial and even many Democrats opposed them.

All told, the legislation could add more than $500 billion to the deficit over the next decade. The deficit – or gap between government spending and tax revenue – is expected to eclipse $1 trillion this year and grow in subsequent years.

The legislation includes a large number of grab-bag provisions big and small, raising the age of tobacco purchases to 21, providing long-sought funding for gun research, boosting funding for the census, and stabilizing pensions for tens of thousands of miners who were on the verge of losing their benefits.

In an eleventh-hour deal, the legislation also extends dozens of tax credits and incentives for biodiesel producers, brewers, distillers and others.

“The list goes on and on,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as he urged support for the legislation when it comes to to the Senate floor later this week.

“There are two timeless truths about the appropriations process in divided government,” McConnell added. “First, neither side will ever get what they would consider to be perfect bills. But second, full-year funding definitely beats drifting endlessly” from one stop-gap spending bill to another.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget chided Congress for embracing what it termed these “zombie tax extenders” that it said would add close to $500 billion to the debt over the next decade. When the tax cut and spending legislation passed the House on Tuesday, CRFB president Maya MacGuineas wrote on Twitter, “What a bucket of garbage this bill is.”

Congress has mostly passed a series of short-term, stop-gap budget bills that piece together weeks or months of spending. The legislation passed Tuesday would provide more than nine months of funding. It will also set up another funding deadline just weeks ahead of the presidential election, potentially setting the stage for another round of budget brinkmanship in the height of the campaign.

Despite Trump’s demands for $8.6 billion for his border wall, the issue that caused a 35-day government shutdown last winter, the legislation keeps border barrier funding at the current level of $1.375 billion. That represented a retreat for the White House, although officials at the White House Office of Management and Budget said the administration retained the flexibility it would need to move money from other accounts if necessary, as it has done in the past.

But along with money that was included to fund federal immigration agencies at current levels, the wall spending was too much to swallow for some liberal lawmakers and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and they opposed the national security piece of the deal, which funds the Homeland Security Department.

The spending legislation will now move to the Senate, which must act before midnight on Friday, when existing funding for government agencies expires. Trump has voiced frustration in the past about Congress’s habit of jamming huge spending increases into giant must-pass bills on deadline. But administration officials were involved in negotiating the package, and the president is expected to sign it, according to the OMB.

In a further burst of bipartisanship Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee was poised to approve the new North American trade deal that was just finalized between House Democrats and the Trump administration. The committee vote would send the trade deal to the full House, which is expected to approve it later this week. The new trade pact updates the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement that Trump campaigned against, adding new labor and enforcement provisions sought by Democrats, and making good on Trump’s pledges to rewrite NAFTA.

Like the trade bill, the spending package includes provisions for both parties to celebrate. Democrats pointed to $25 million in funding for federal gun violence research and $425 million in election security grants, as well as a $208 million boost in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The federal funding for gun violence research is the first in more than 20 years. Other Democratic priorities included in the bill are a 3.1 percent pay raise for civilian federal employees, $7.6 billion in funding for the 2020 Census and record funding for education programs including Head Start.

Approval of the pay raise, which would be the largest since 2009, ends a year of back-and-forth over a boost for some 2.1 million executive branch workers. Trump initially recommended no hike, but then in late summer backed a 2.6 percent increase to be paid across the board.

Also included in the spending legislation is a bill raising the national age for tobacco sales to 21, a priority for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). It includes reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and a permanent repeal of several Affordable Care Act taxes that have faced bipartisan opposition since the act’s 2010 passage.

Republicans highlighted a $22 billion increase in Pentagon funding, which Democrats agreed to over the summer as part of a two-year, $2.7 trillion budget accord that also suspended the federal debt cap for the remainder of Trump’s first term.

The new deal fills in the details of agency-by-agency, account-by-account funding pursuant to that broader deal.

Other GOP wins included funding to advance a Republican-supported Veterans Affairs program aimed at privatizing some VA health care delivery, as well as the preservation of several policy restrictions related to abortion and gun rights.

The bill, for instance, does not contain Democratic language overturning the Trump administration’s move to bar organizations that receive federal family planning grants from referring patients for abortions. It also leaves out increased funding of foreign family planning programs that Republicans have argued encourages abortions.