but the lapse may last only a few hours as the House and Senate plan votes early Friday morning.
There still are risks because of opposition in the House from conservative Republicans and some Democrats to the two-year budget agreement, which will allow an additional $300 billion in spending for the next two years. The bill also would fund the government on a short-term basis until March 23, and would suspend the federal debt limit until March 2019.
But if there were fears that a U.S. government shutdown, however brief, could contribute to volatility in the market, they weren’t enough to persuade GOP Senator Rand Paul or a sizable number of House Republicans and Democrats to say they would vote for a plan to keep the government open.
The Senate had to wait until after 1 a.m. Friday to take a procedural vote allowing the legislation to proceed because Paul denied the unanimous consent needed to act sooner. The Senate was moving toward passing the bill soon after, and the House plans to vote sometime between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., if not earlier.
It’s filled with long-stalled or long-sought priorities for both sides. Republican defense hawks get more funds for the military, while Democrats get extra money for domestic priorities like combating opioid addiction, the National Institutes of Health budget and community health centers. The agreement also repeals a piece of Obamacare -- a Medicare cost-cutting board aimed at ensuring the program’s long-term solvency. And it would provide $90 billion in disaster assistance for California, Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The bill authorizes the sale of 100 million barrels from the Strategic Oil Reserve to pay for some of the new spending, and raises customs and airport security fees in the next decade. It also renews a number of expired tax breaks for calendar 2017 including for cellulosic biofuel, while extending a nuclear power tax credit that was scheduled to expire so that it is available after 2020.
Submitted February 09, 2018 at 01:42AM by wanmoar http://ift.tt/2nO3loz
