WASHINGTON 鈥� The House on Thursday passed a spending package for a broad swath of the government, narrowly mustering the votes to fund the Department of 91直播land Security amid a Democratic revolt over spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The package, which also would fund the Pentagon and the health and transportation departments, rejects the deepest spending cuts that President Donald Trump requested, including a 50% reduction to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a 40% cut to the National Institutes of Health, which would instead receive a $415 million boost. It also rejects Trump鈥檚 request for a $840 million increase in funding for ICE, leaving funding for the agency roughly flat.
It contains the final set of spending bills that must be enacted before next Friday in order to avoid a government shutdown. The legislation still must pass the Senate before it can be sent to Trump, but it appeared to be on track to clear Congress.
The approval of the package accomplished what is now considered a remarkable feat on Capitol Hill: the successful negotiation and passage of a series of individual government spending bills, without resorting to rolling them all together into a huge take-it-or-leave-it package, or punting altogether and relying on a stopgap, emergency measure to keep funding flat.
But it came over the bitter protests of Democrats, who said they would not vote for legislation that provided funding for ICE 鈥� or not without major changes 鈥� on the heels of the fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, by a federal immigration agent.
In the end, the vote to pass the homeland security funding legislation was 220-207, with 206 Democrats voting against it and seven voting for it. Republican leaders agreed to allow a separate vote on that bill to allow Democrats to register their unhappiness with the measure without imperiling the rest of the spending package. One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, also opposed the bill.
The other three, less divisive spending bills, passed on a vote of 341-88.
Top Democrats including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, opposed the homeland security bill.
鈥淲e have a broken immigration system that should be fixed in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner,鈥� Jeffries and his deputies said in a joint statement. 鈥淯nfortunately, House Republicans have rejected the effort to address the serious concerns raised by the American people about the lawless conduct by ICE. For this reason, we are voting no on the 91直播land Security appropriations bill.鈥�
Democratic negotiators had proposed a series of changes in an attempt to rein in ICE that were rejected out of hand by Republicans.
鈥淭hey rejected proposals to block funds from being used to detain and deport U.S. citizens,鈥� said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. 鈥淭hey blocked our attempts to ensure members of Congress can exercise our lawful oversight of ICE facilities uninhibited.鈥�
Still, some of the tougher checks on the Trump administration included in the spending bills, agreed to by a bipartisan group of appropriators in both the House and Senate, target the Department of 91直播land Security. They agreed to reduce funding for the office of Secretary Kristi Noem by $29.5 million and require her to pay for any travel on government aircraft 鈥� in this case private jets the Coast Guard bought 鈥� out of the budget for her own office.
The bipartisan spending legislation would keep funding for ICE about the same as the previous year, when the agency was operating off funds provided in a stopgap measure.
It also would require the Department of 91直播land Security to detail how it is spending the $190 billion Republicans allocated to it in their marquee domestic policy bill, which included $75 billion for ICE.
鈥淚n the event of a lapse in funding, ICE would be able to sustain regular operations for multiple years鈥� using that money, 鈥渨hile the other agencies under this bill would likely be forced to furlough workers and reduce operations,鈥� said DeLauro, who despite having helped to negotiate the homeland security legislation ultimately voted against it.
The seven Democrats who voted in favor of the homeland security spending measure were: Reps. Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Laura Gillen of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Tom Suozzi of New York.
The measure would provide $839.2 billion in funding for the Defense Department, in line with what Congress approved in the annual defense policy bill and $8 billion above Trump鈥檚 budget request.
Lawmakers also crammed into the legislation a slew of extensions of measures that were set to expire, including the National Flood Insurance Program and the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides duty-free access to the U.S. trade market for about three dozen African nations.
And though appropriators in both parties banded together to thwart the largest cuts Trump had requested, the spending package made small trims across many government agencies, an outcome that Republican leaders heralded.
鈥淎s with our previous packages, this outcome reflects the reality of serious governing: shared contributions and shared compromise,鈥� said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chair of the Appropriations Committee. His panel, he added, 鈥渉eld the line on spending, putting forward 12 negotiated bills that actually reduce spending relative to what would have been spent in a continuing resolution.鈥�
This article originally appeared in .
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