Shutdown avoided as House sends spending bill to Trump’s desk

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The House on Thursday night easily approved a border security and spending bill that President Trump plans to sign by Friday to avert a second government shutdown.

The bill passed 300-128, after the Senate approved it 86-13. The legislation let most members breathe a sigh of relief that a second shutdown would be avoided.

The measure funds nine departments and dozens of agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, which negotiators agreed to give $1.375 billion for 55 miles of physical barriers on the southern border.

That amount is less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion Trump requested for a border wall or barrier in targeted areas. Conservatives were quick to criticize the deal and called it a loss for the president, who campaigned on improving border security.

Most Republicans voted against it, along with 19 Democrats, a group that included firebrand members like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who said the bill gave too much money to Homeland Security.

Trump assured Republicans just before the vote that he will make a national emergency declaration to unilaterally fund additional miles of border barriers beyond those appropriated in the spending bill. That effort will face a court challenge and had members of both parties warning against such a move.

The fight over border wall funding began in December and caused a 35-day partial government closure no lawmaker wanted to repeat. It hobbled federal services including the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration and left 800,000 workers without paychecks.

“Shutting down the government is something we have to avoid from this point forward,” said Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said the compromise approved Thursday might pave the way for lawmakers to avoid a spending stalemate by the end of this fiscal year, when a new set of spending bills need to pass.

“As difficult as this road has been, I think this is actually a hopeful moment of this chapter and may be the beginning of compromise in this chamber, which we are certainly going to need going forward,” said Cole. “We may have had differences on how we got here, but at the end of the day, we have given the American people what they deserve, which is a fully funded, operational government.”

House and Senate negotiators hammered out a final deal Monday after talks broke down over a demand by Democrats to cap illegal immigrant detentions. Democrats dropped the demand, and the two sides negotiated a deal on the number of detention beds.

Democrats won funding to revive an Obama-era program to allow more illegal immigrant families to be released from detention and monitored. They also secured a $1 billion boost for the Census Bureau, money for the first new Coast Guard heavy icebreaker in 40 years, and a chance to boast that they blocked Trump’s campaign promise to construct a wall “from sea to shining sea.”

“Neither every Republican nor every Democrat got everything they wanted,” said House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.

But Trump has been saying for weeks that he would settle for a steel-slat fence, and the bill allows him to build 55 miles of such a barrier in the Rio Grande Valley.

The bill, which also funds the Department of Transportation, includes $20 billion for new infrastructure, including repairs to crumbling roads and bridges both parties are eager to begin.

Trump’s approval was facilitated in part by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the lead GOP negotiator. He stayed in touch with Trump and assured him the $1.375 billion would be a down payment on border wall funding and that Republicans will seek more money in subsequent spending measures.

The measure provides a 1.9 percent pay increase for federal workers but did not include a provision sought by Democrats to provide back pay to federal contractors left unpaid during the recent shutdown.

The bill also failed to settle a partisan squabble over the Violence Against Women Act.

Democrats rejected an attempt by the GOP late Thursday to amend the bill to extend VAWA, which expires Friday. Democrats wanted to include a new provision in VAWA that would add on protections for transgendered individuals but Republicans would only agree to a “clean” extension with no changes, so it was left out of the underlying bill.

The GOP attempt to amend the bill with the clean VAWA extension failed.

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