Congressional leaders close in on $1.3 trillion spending deal as shutdown looms
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders inched closer to a deal Wednesday on a massive spending bill that would increase funding to fight the opioid epidemic, help states with election security, and boost infrastructure spending across the country, including for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey that President Trump opposed.
The emerging deal would also include limited funding for border security and no new money for immigration enforcement in other areas of the country — two items that Trump had demanded in the negotiations, according to a source familiar with negotiations. .
The agreement has not yet been made public and is subject to final negotiations — with leaders still at odds over a few issues, which they declined to detail.
Congress must pass a new spending bill before midnight on Friday or it will trigger another partial government shutdown.
The prospects for a shutdown have surged in recent days as lawmakers continued to haggle over details of the spending deal. Lawmakers may try to pass a short-term measure before Friday’s deadline to buy more time for consideration of the bigger spending deal.Â
That draft agreement would allocate $1.3 trillion to fund domestic and military programs through Sept. 30, the end of this fiscal year. Â
Democrats touted big wins in the still-emerging package, including $2.8 billion for opioid addiction treatment, prevention and research and $380 million in grants to states for new technology to guard against cyberattacks, as well as millions of dollars in additional funding for the FBI to combat possible Russian meddling in the 2018 elections, according to the source familiar with negotiations.Â
The bill would also include money for a high-profile infrastructure project opposed by Trump — a long-planned tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan known as the Gateway project. More than $500 million in federal funding would be available to go toward constructing the tunnel under the Hudson river, according to the source.
The money won’t be labeled “Gateway Tunnel,†but it will be distributed to several grant programs, which can fund the project without approval from the Trump Administration. Despite being a lifelong New Yorker, Trump has opposed the $30 billion project and urged GOP leaders not to put it in the spending bill.Â
The bill will include $1.6 billion for border security, including $641 million for 33 miles of fencing and levees along the southern border. Democrats said that money cannot be used to build a concrete wall.
The administration also wanted more money for new immigration agents and additional detention beds, but neither of those are included in the draft package.
The bill will not include any provisions to protect so-called DREAMers, undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, from deportation. Democrats have sought to grant those immigrants a path to citizenship, but they failed to pass a stand-alone immigration bill earlier this year or to get any permanent solution to that issue in the spending bill.Â
Democrats were just as happy about a couple of items not in the package: a provision to de-fund family-planning grants, including money to Planned Parenthood, and a measure aimed at barring federal dollars from going to so-called sanctuary cities that limit local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Those conservative priorities will not be in the final deal.
Democrats and Republicans agreed on top-line spending levels in February, when they approved a sweeping budget deal and a short-term funding measure to keep the government open until midnight March 23.
The fiscal year for 2018 began Oct. 1, 2017, but Congress has failed to pass a long-term measure to fund federal agencies — relying instead on five stop-gap measures to keep the government open. There was a partial shutdown for several days in January when a short-term spending bill expired with no agreement on an extension. Another disagreement led to lapse in funding for just a few hours in February, but it was resolved quickly enough that it did not disrupt government services. That deal extended funding through Friday.
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