WASHINGTON - A $1.1 trillion spending bill aimed at funding the government through October and putting to rest the bitter budget battles of last year is getting generally positive reviews from House Republicans who are eager to avoid another shutdown crisis with elections looming.
Republicans say the favorable response to the all-encompassing spending bill reflects the desire of the rank and file to avoid a repeat of the politically damaging standoffs with the White House that led to last year’s 16-day partial government shutdown.
The closure sent congressional approval numbers plummeting and roughed up Republicans in particular.
Since then, they have regained support amid the troubled rollout of President Barack Obama’s health-care law.
“The shutdown educated - particularly our younger members who weren’t here during our earlier shutdown - about how futile that practice is,” said House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky. “There is a real hard determination now that we will reacquire and use the power of the purse that the Congress constitutionally has been given.”
Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said the new legislation would get “our country off this notion of shutting the government down” and would allow Republicans to keep the spotlight on other issues, a reference to the health-care law that’s weighing politically on Democrats.
Tea Party favorites including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also have been slow to criticize the spending measure, which appears likely to pass the Senate no later than Saturday and probably before then. Cruz was a key force in the strategy to shut down the government over funding of so-called Obamacare.
The spending measure contains dozens of trade-offs between Democrats and Republicans as it fleshes out the details of the budget deal that Congress passed last month. That pact gave relatively modest but much-sought relief to the Pentagon and domestic agencies after deep cuts last year.
Western Republicans from timber country were anxious about payments to towns surrounded by federal lands but were reassured that the payments would be extended though separate legislation. Gulf Coast lawmakers praised a provision aimed at delaying federal flood insurance premium increases from new flood maps that have proven faulty, but the provision left in place other changes enacted in 2012.
The $1.1 trillion measure includes $1.01 trillion for U.S. government operations, plus war financing known as overseas combat operations. Negotiators had agreed on a $1.01 trillion base spending level in December as part of a 2-year, bipartisan budget agreement.
The 1,582-page bill, announced Monday night by lawmakers including Rogers and Senate Appropriations Chairman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., would support defense spending at about $573 billion for the current fiscal year, with $85.2 billion for overseas combat operations in Afghanistan, about $2 billion less than in fiscal year 2013.
The bill probably will reach the House floor today, Rogers said.
The bill “represents a positive step forward for the nation and our economy,” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement. The Obama administration “urges Congress to move quickly to pass it,” she said.
Government funding runs through today, so lawmakers plan to pass a separate three day bill at current funding levels to push the deadline to Saturday.
The House passed the stopgap measure Tuesday by voice vote, sending it to the Senate.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press and by Derek Wallbank, Kathleen Hunter, Roxana Tiron, Richard Rubin, Sandrine Rastello, Peter Cook, Caitlin Webber, Silla Brush and Dave Michaels of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 01/15/2014