Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with Senate Democrats, agreed to a $1.1 trillion government funding bill Tuesday night that will avoid a federal shutdown and fund the implementation of President Barack Obama's executive immigrant amnesty through at least Feb. 27, 2015.
The bill is now headed to the chamber's rules committee where it will be prepared for debate followed by a full House vote on Thursday, reported Fox News. The government technically runs out of money at midnight Thursday, so if the Senate doesn't pass the bill on the same day, a stopgap spending bill will have to be passed to buy more time and prevent a shutdown.
Nearly every government department except Homeland Security will be financed through Sept. 30, 2015. The 1,603-page bill contains $521 billion for defense and $492 for non-defensive measures, with an additional $64 billion provided for military operations, according to Fox News.
The Department of Homeland Security will only be financed through Feb. 27, which is a move by Republicans who are eager to force a debate over Obama's immigration amnesty. However, the president does have more than two months to begin issuing visas and Social Security numbers to illegal immigrants.
Many conservatives are unhappy that the bill fails to challenge Obama's immigration amnesty, and Democrats are unhappy that it significantly weakens the 2010 Dodd-Frank regulations preventing banks from dealing in riskier forms of financial instruments, reported The Associated Press.
Both parties sacrificed certain provisions and received trade-offs in their bipartisan effort to continue funding the government.
Democrats got their budget increases for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Republicans received their cut to the Internal Revenue Service budget and the Environmental Protection Agency, reported AP.
A statement issued by the House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., praised the bipartisan achievement of agreeing on a spending bill and preventing a shutdown.
"After months of thorough, business-like, sometimes tough but always civil negotiations, we have reached a responsible, bipartisan and bicameral agreement on funding for government operations for 2015," said Rogers and Mikulski. "This bill fulfills our constitutional duty to fund the government, preventing damage from shutdown politics that are bad for the economy, cost jobs and hurt middle class families."
The spending bill would also give Obama $5.4 of the requested $6.2 billion to help fight Ebola in the U.S. and overseas, with most going to Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As for foreign aid, the bill provides $3.1 billion to Israel's military and $1.3 billion to Egypt's forces.
The FBI's budget increases to $8.4 billion and NASA receives a $364 million increase, bringing its budget to $18 billion.
