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Congress Easily Clears Massive Omnibus Spending Bill, Avoiding Shutdown

Source: govexec.com - Dec 18, 2015

In con­vin­cing bi­par­tis­an votes, the House and Sen­ate have passed an om­ni­bus to keep the gov­ern­ment fun­ded and a massive pack­age of tax break ex­ten­sions, wrap­ping up a tu­mul­tu­ous year with a deal that left neither Re­pub­lic­ans nor Demo­crats gloat­ing.

Hav­ing already passed the tax meas­ure, the House ap­proved the om­ni­bus pack­age Fri­day on a 316-113 vote, with 150 Re­pub­lic­ans and 166 Demo­crats in the “aye” column. The Sen­ate then cleared the two meas­ures to­geth­er on a 65-33 tally. Pres­id­ent Obama plans to sign the en­tire pack­age.

Both Speak­er Paul Ry­an and Minor­ity Lead­er Nancy Pelosi were hes­it­ant to claim vic­tory in the deal, due to hard-liners in both parties who are dis­sat­is­fied with its pro­vi­sions—or some that got left out. The biggest stick­ing point for Re­pub­lic­ans is that the bill did noth­ing to block the flow of refugees com­ing from Syr­ia, which they view as a na­tion­al se­cur­ity con­cern. The bill like­wise does noth­ing to tar­get Planned Par­ent­hood, an­oth­er GOP pri­or­ity.

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Category: General Business