Trillion-dollar budget bill clears House despite conservative opposition

Party leaders pushed a massive $1.1 trillion spending bill for this year through the House on Wednesday, providing a rare and likely brief respite from three years of partisan and intraparty fighting over the size and role of government.

Despite wide bipartisan support, the sheer size and scope of the bill gave conservatives and progressives alike plenty of fodder for disappointment.

With none of the conflict of recent budget battles, lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House approved the measure 359–67. The Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote on final approval later this week.

Lawmakers from both parties, most of them facing re-election this November, seemed to have little taste for a standoff that might have triggered a repeat of the government shutdown in October — which polls say voters hated.

The 1,582-page bill approved Wednesday filled in the details on a bipartisan agreement enacted in December that laid out spending totals for the next two years. It provides money for virtually every federal agency, and eases some — but not all — of the automatic spending cuts that took effect last year.

Fiscal conservatives took issue with the vast nature of the bill.

"While Americans suffer the consequences of Obamacare, Congress is trying to rush through another massive bill before reading it," Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told USA Today.

FreedomWorks, Heritage Action and other conservative groups had called on Republicans to oppose the bill because it calls for $42 billion more in spending than the budget bill House Republicans passed last year. Groups like Heritage Action had been considered partially responsible for the strong GOP opposition to a budget deal last fall.  

But liberals in the House have also expressed displeasure with the bill, saying it doesn’t go far enough in spending on education, social services and environmental protection.

Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey, one of only three Democrats who voted against the bill, said it doesn't restore enough spending that was cut during the sequester.

"This bill allows most of the sequester cuts to take effect now and follows the budget agreement in allowing the full sequester to take effect two years from now ... cuts that gut research, education, health care, infrastructure and other investments necessary for a vibrant economy for the present and the future," he said in a statement. "This bill is the continuation of a pessimistic vision of our country, one with a drastically shrunken government, a shredded safety net, and a diminished ability to seize the opportunities and to address the challenges that lie before us." 

Even Democrats who voted for the bill appeared not to like it.

"With this bill, we are waist deep in manure instead of neck deep in manure. Hooray, I guess," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

The primary achievement is that there is an agreement at all. After last year's collapse of the budget process, the government shutdown and another brush with a disastrous default on U.S. debt, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., made a deal.

The agreement avoids a repeat of the 5 percent cut applied to domestic agencies last year and prevents the Pentagon from absorbing $20 billion in new cuts.

Challenges remain. Congress needs to raise the government's borrowing cap by the end of February or early March, and it's unclear how big a battle that will be.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press