Obama signs $1.1 trillion spending package

Some conservatives were unhappy to see the spending and tax deals pass. House Freedom Caucus member Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said both bills are loaded with special interest handouts and spending increases that will only fuel the anti-establishment wing of the Republican party. He states Republicans have given us gridlock in Congress for the last seven years but he forgot to tell us the Democrats took over the House and Senate in 2007, where they blocked everything.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who is also seeking the Republican presidential nomination, had threatened in an interview on Fox News on Thursday to delay passage of the package.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against it, as did Sen.

With the votes, lawmakers wrapped up a surprisingly productive, bipartisan burst of late-session legislation in a divided Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hailed the bipartisan legislation as a big achievement for Republicans to get Congress back to work.

Republican Representative Steve King said in a news release he was disappointed none of his proposed amendments to the omnibus spending bill made it to the floor. But he said it does not answer all the questions yet either.

The US Senate has passed sweeping fiscal legislation averting a government shutdown, locking in billions of dollars of tax breaks and scrapping a 40-year-old ban on the export of US oil.

“This will have an enormous geopolitical impact”, Pittenger said hours after the final vote.

“At the end of the day, you walk out with less of what you wanted, and more of what you didn’t want”.

Pittenger said that, along with tax cuts and an increase in military spending should help North Carolina’s businesses grow. “With crude exports comes job creation, economic growth, new revenues, prosperity, and enhanced energy security for our allies and ourselves”, Murkowski said. However, the Democrats were concerned that lifting the ban was “very harmful”.

“They had to put big oil in the omnibus” to get the spending measure passed, Pelosi told reporters Friday before the vote. But she cited successes in driving away most GOP policy proposals from the measure. Democratic wins also include higher domestic budgets and tax breaks for working families and renewable energy.

“Many people had a screen over seeing what is good in the bill because of the oil”, she said, according to Politico.

There were last-minute fears that the Friday morning House vote would be close after some Democrats hinted they might withhold their support for the spending bill over objections to the provision lifting the oil export ban.

“Where did all the deficit hawks go?” asked Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from San Francisco, who opposed the bill.

The bill extends more than 50 expiring tax cuts, with more than 20 becoming permanent, including credits for companies’ expenditures for research and equipment purchases and reductions for lower-earning families and households with children and college students. The new agreement bumps up defense spending by $23.9 billion over last year’s levels and prohibits the government from using funds to move inmates at Guantanamo Bay into the United States.

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the legislation passed Friday will increase the 2016 fiscal year budget deficit by $157 billion and by $95 billion in 2017. The need to win Obama’s signature helped rid the measure of most of the controversial GOP provisions: killing federal money for Planned Parenthood, limiting the flow of Syrian refugees and undoing dozens of Obama actions on the environment, labor, financial regulation and relations with Cuba.

The measure contains large spending boosts for veterans and medical research, and funds a familiar roster of grants for transportation projects, first responders and community development.

The two pieces of legislation would suspend three taxes meant to fund the Affordable Care Act – a so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health insurance plans would be delayed from 2018 to 2020; a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices would be paused in 2016 and 2017; and a fee on health insurers would be paused for 2016.