Border wall:
The bill provides $1.6 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico
border but with serious strings attached. Of the total, $251 million is
earmarked specifically for “secondary fencing” near San Diego, where
fencing is already in place; $445 million is for no more than 25 miles
of “levee fencing”; $196 million is for “primary pedestrian fencing” in
the Rio Grande Valley; $445 million is for the replacement of existing
fencing in that area; and the rest is for planning, design and
technology — not for wall construction. The biggest catch is this: The
barriers authorized to be built under the act must be “operationally
effective designs” already deployed as of last March, meaning none of
President Trump’s big, beautiful wall prototypes can be built.
Immigration enforcement:
The bill bumps up funding for both U.S. Customs and Border Protection
and for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — delivering increases
sought by the Trump administration. But there are significant
restrictions on how that new money can be spent. Democrats pushed for,
and won, limitations on hiring new ICE interior enforcement agents and
on the number of undocumented immigrants the agency can detain. Under
provisions written into the bill, ICE can have no more than 40,354
immigrants in detention by the time the fiscal year ends in September.
But there is a catch: The Homeland Security secretary is granted
discretion to transfer funds from other accounts “as necessary to ensure
the detention of aliens prioritized for removal.”
Infrastructure:
Numerous transportation programs get funding increases in the bill, but
the debate leading up to its release focused on one megaproject: The
Gateway program, aimed at improving rail access to and from Manhattan on
Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. Trump made it a signature fight,
largely to punish Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)
and other Democratic backers of the project who have held up other Trump
initiatives, and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told Congress
this month that the project simply wasn’t ready for prime time. The
project is not mentioned in the bill, and Republican aides say that they
turned back efforts to essentially earmark federal funding for the
project. But Democrats say that the project is still eligible for as
much as $541 million in funding this fiscal year through accounts that
Chao does not control. The project might also still qualify for other
pools of money, though it will have to compete with other projects on an
equal playing field.
Health care: Left
out of the bill was a health-care measure sought by GOP Sens. Susan
Collins (Maine) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) that would have allowed
states to establish high-risk pools to help cover costly insurance
claims while restoring certain payments to insurers under the Affordable
Care Act. Trump, who ended the “cost-sharing reduction” payments in the
fall, supported the Collins-Alexander language. But Democrats opposed
it, because they said it included language expanding the existing
prohibition on federal funding for abortions.
Guns: The bill includes the Fix NICS Act, bipartisan legislation
aimed at improving the National Instant Criminal Background Check
System that is used to screen U.S. gun buyers. It provides for
incentives and penalties to encourage federal agencies and states to
send records to the federal database in an effort to prevent the type of
oversight that preceded last year’s church massacre in Sutherland
Springs, Tex. Democrats pushed for more aggressive gun laws, including
universal background checks, but won only a minor concession: Language
in the report accompanying the bill clarifying that the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention can, in fact, conduct research into gun
violence. A long-standing rider known as the Dickey Amendment,
which states that no CDC funds “may be used to advocate or promote gun
control,” has been interpreted in the past to bar such research. The
amendment itself remains.
Taxes: The
“grain glitch,” a provision in the new GOP tax law that favored
farmer-owned cooperatives over traditional agriculture corporations by providing a significantly larger tax benefit
for sales to cooperatives, is undone in the bill. Farm-state lawmakers
and farming groups said that without a fix, the tax law could disrupt
the farm economy and even put some companies out of business. The
spending bill tweaks the tax law to level the playing field between
sales to coops and corporations. Democrats in exchange got a 12.5
percent increase in annual allocations for a low-income housing tax
credit for four years.
Internal Revenue Service:
Despite the administration’s attempts to slash its budget, lawmakers
grant $11.431 billion to the nation’s tax collectors, a $196 million
year-to-year increase and $456 million more than Trump requested. The
figure includes $320 million to implement changes enacted as part of the
GOP tax overhaul plan.
Opioids: The
bill increases funding to tackle the opioid epidemic, a boost that
lawmakers from both parties hailed as a win. The legislation allocates
more than $4.65 billion across agencies to help states and local
governments on efforts toward prevention, treatment and law enforcement
initiatives. That represents a $3 billion increase over 2017 spending
levels.
Foreign policy: Included in the spending bill is the Taylor Force Act.
Named after an American who was killed by a Palestinian in 2016, the
measure curtails certain economic assistance to the Palestinian
Authority until it stops financially supporting convicted terrorists and
their families. It unanimously passed the House last year.
Baseball:
Should the bill pass, some minor-league ballplayers could see a raise
this year — but only barely. The Save America’s Pastime Act exempts pro baseball players from federal labor laws
and has been a major lobbying priority for Major League Baseball ever
since minor-league players began suing the league in recent years for
paying them illegally low wages. The version in the bill exempts only
players working under a contract that pays minimum wage, but there are
major loopholes: The contract has to pay minimum wage for a only 40-hour
workweek during the season, not spring training or the offseason — and
it includes no guarantee of overtime even though baseball prospects
routinely work long hours. Thus, under the bill, a player is guaranteed a
minimum salary of $1,160 a month. The current minor-league minimum is
$1,100 a month.
Election security: The
bill provides $380 million to the federal Election Assistance
Commission to make payments to states to improve election security and
technology, and the FBI is set to receive $300 million in
counterintelligence funding to combat Russian hacking.
Congressional misconduct:
The House appears to have gone further than the Senate to address
concerns about how allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct are
handled on Capitol Hill. The House set aside $4 million to pay for
mandatory workplace rights training and plans to create a new Office of
Employee Advocacy to assist employees in proceedings before the Office
of Compliance or House Ethics Committees. House leaders also made a
point of highlighting plans to expand the House Day Care Center. But
senators failed to reach agreement on making changes to how allegations
of wrongdoing are handled, so they won’t be included in the bill.
Congressional Research Service: The bill mandates that reports published by Congress’s in-house researchers be published online for public consumption.
Historically, such reports have not been easy to access online, and a
House Appropriations subcommittee took the lead last year in finally
forcing transparency.
District of Columbia:
The nation’s capital will see a slight dip in its federal funding.
Lawmakers provide $721 million in direct federal funding to the
District, a $35 million drop from last year — mostly because of a $22
million cut in emergency planning money that was used to prepare for the
2017 presidential inauguration. Lawmakers also kept out GOP attempts to
block the District’s budget autonomy act and its assisted suicide law.
Religion and politics:
The federal ban on tax-exempt churches engaging in political activity,
known as the Johnson Amendment, will continue, despite attempts by Trump
and GOP lawmakers to rescind it.
Jury duty:
If you serve on a federal jury, your daily pay rate will increase to
$50 per day — a bipartisan win sought in part after two dozen federal
grand jurors in Washington petitioned House and Senate judiciary
committee members last fall, saying the current pay rate is “abysmal,”
below the minimum wage and a hardship.
Secret Service:
The agency responsible for protecting the president and his family gets
$2.007 billion, including $9.9 million for overtime worked without pay
in 2017 and $14 million to construct a taller and stronger fence around
the White House. In a win for congressional Democrats concerned about
Secret Service agents protecting Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump on
overseas business trips, the bill includes language requiring an annual
report on travel costs for people protected by the service — including
the adult children of presidents.
Restaurant tips: In
December, the Labor Department proposed a rule that would allow
employers such as restaurant owners to “pool” their employees’ tips and
redistribute them as they saw fit — including, potentially, to
themselves. That generated a bipartisan outcry, and the bill spells out
explicitly in law that tip pooling is not permitted: “An employer may
not keep tips received by its employees for any purposes, including
allowing managers or supervisors to keep any portion of employees’ tips,
regardless of whether or not the employer takes a tip credit.”
Yucca Mountain:
The legislation blocks attempts by the Energy Department to restart a
moribund nuclear storage program at the mountain in the Silver State.
Former Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) was
a fierce opponent of the measure. Sens. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) — the most
embattled GOP incumbent up for reelection this year — and Catherine
Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) proved that they, too, can stop a federal program
that is widely unpopular in their state from starting again.
FBI:
The spending bill grants the agency $9.03 billion for salaries and
expenses, a $263 million jump over the last fiscal year and $307 million
more than the Trump administration requested. The bill does not include
any funding for the construction of a new FBI headquarters, a win for
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Senate Appropriations
Committee. According to aides familiar with the move, the senator sought
to block new construction funding in response to the administration’s
plans to keep the FBI headquarters in downtown Washington instead of
moving it to suburban Virginia or Maryland.
Asian carp:
The invasive species has wreaked havoc on the Great Lakes, and
lawmakers from states bordering the lakes touted language that forces
the Army Corps of Engineers to keep working on ensuring that vessels in
the Illinois River don’t carry the carp across an electric field erected
to keep them out of the lakes.
Apprenticeships:
Federal money for apprenticeship programs will increase by $50 million,
and there’s a $75 million increase for career and technical education
programs. The office of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) noted that
other job training and “workforce development” programs also stand to
benefit, including “more money for child care and early head start
programs to help make it easier for job seekers to enter or return to
the workforce.” This has been an area of concern for former “Apprentice”
star Ivanka Trump.
rts:
Federal funding for the arts goes up, despite GOP attempts to slash it.
The National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities will see funding
climb to $152.8 million each, a $3 million increase over the last fiscal
year. Trump proposed eliminating the endowments. The National Gallery
of Art gets $165.9 million, a $1.04 million jump in funding. The John F.
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will receive $40.5 million,
which is $4 million more than the last fiscal year.
Public broadcasting:
Big Bird, “Antiques Roadshow” and “Masterpiece Theatre” can play on as
lawmakers agreed not to cut funding for the nation’s public television
and radio networks. Government funding for the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting will remain at $465 million — the same level as past years.
PBS and NPR draw most of their funding directly from member stations
and viewers like you.
Extenders:
The bill reauthorizes key Federal Aviation Administration programs
through the end of September and extends the National Flood Insurance
Program through the end of July.
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