Top Lawmakers Say Bipartisan Spending Deal Reached--5th Update
December 12 2019 - 10:10PM
Dow Jones News
By Andrew Duehren and Andrew Restuccia
WASHINGTON -- Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers said they
reached a tentative agreement on federal government spending,
giving Congress and the White House about a week to approve the
particulars before funding runs out after Dec. 20.
"There's a meeting of the minds," House Appropriations
Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D., N.Y.) said on Thursday.
President Trump and House Republicans haven't yet signed off on
the accord, aides said. But the president "likes what he sees,"
according to a senior administration official. The White House was
still reviewing the details of the agreement as of Thursday
night.
The agreement follows a meeting on Thursday between House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin and the leaders of the House and Senate appropriations
committees.
Leaving that meeting, Mr. Mnuchin said that negotiators were
focusing on a small list of remaining issues and that he planned to
update President Trump on the talks later Thursday.
The agreement covers nearly $1.4 trillion in discretionary
government spending across a dozen bills for the rest of the fiscal
year, which ends Sept. 30, 2020. Negotiators still need to agree on
the language of legislation, which is expected to be released on
Monday, leaving the two sides the weekend to iron out any final
issues.
The agreement, if finalized, would be a compromise on the
contentious issue of a proposed border wall between the U.S. and
Mexico.
Under the deal, Congress would approve roughly the same amount
of funding it did last fiscal year for building a barrier -- $1.38
billion -- while leaving the president's ability to redirect
government funds untouched, according to four of the people
familiar with the negotiations.
President Trump had asked for $8.6 billion for the wall in his
budget request, and Democrats had sought to block new funding for
the wall and curb the president's ability to redesignate money to
build it.
Mr. Trump has siphoned money from the Pentagon, including $3.6
billion for military construction projects, to build a wall, though
that effort has been repeatedly challenged in court. The funding
agreement wouldn't restore funding for the projects that lost money
to wall construction, a key Democratic demand, according to three
of the people.
Deep disagreements about paying for the border wall have racked
the spending process for years, holding up hundreds of billions in
other funding and leading to the longest government shutdown in
U.S. history, which ended earlier this year. Congress has
temporarily extended funding twice in the past few months as the
two sides haggled over the border wall, a central priority for Mr.
Trump.
If the tentative deal moves forward, lawmakers will still face a
tight schedule to pass each of the dozen annual spending bills
before the last stopgap measure expires after Dec. 20 -- and many
lawmakers plan to head home for the holidays. House members said
they aim to bring packages of the bills to the floor on Tuesday,
giving the Senate just days to decide on the legislation before the
end of next week.
The agreement still could face resistance both from Democrats
resistant to supporting any wall funding and Republicans who hoped
to see more money spent on border security.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met with Democratic
Congressional leadership on Wednesday to discuss their priorities
in the negotiations.
"We would like to see a way to limit transfer authority, so it's
not just a shell game and the president is just taking money from
the military or from some other pot to build a wall," said Rep.
Joaquin Castro (D., Texas), the chairman of the Hispanic
Caucus.
Even without an agreement, the chances remain strong that some
solution would be found to keep the federal government funded. Mrs.
Pelosi has repeatedly vowed to avert another government shutdown,
and Mr. Trump has privately told advisers that he wants to avoid a
funding lapse.
Successful passage of the funding deal would mark another
bipartisan victory in the final days of 2019. Even as House
Democrats move forward with their bid to impeach the president,
lawmakers have gone ahead with a renewed North American trade deal
and a defense authorization bill after months of negotiations.
Write to Andrew Duehren at andrew.duehren@wsj.com and Andrew
Restuccia at Andrew.Restuccia@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 12, 2019 21:55 ET (02:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.