Congressional Leaders Agree on $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill as Deadline Looms
March 22, 2018 by admin
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Afterward, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, issued an upbeat statement making it clear that Mr. Trump had overcome his reservations, saying that he and the congressional leaders had “discussed their support for the bill.”
The president appeared to endorse the deal late Wednesday night, even as he vented frustration about the compromises that made it possible.
“Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming,” he wrote on Twitter. “Most importantly, got $700 Billion to rebuild our Military, $716 Billion next year…most ever. Had to waste money on Dem giveaways in order to take care of military pay increase and new equipment.”
Democrats were able to exert influence in the negotiations over the spending bill because votes from their party are needed to approve the legislation in the Senate and will most likely be needed in the House, as well.
The text of the spending bill, spanning 2,232 pages, was unveiled Wednesday night. To improve border security, the measure includes $1.6 billion for more than 90 miles of physical barriers along the border with Mexico, as well as related technology, according to congressional aides.
But there are strings attached to what can be built, and the funding is far short of the total Mr. Trump would ultimately need to build his promised “big, beautiful wall.” Some of the funding is for replacing existing barriers.
The spending bill does not resolve the uncertain fate of hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, who have been protected under an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that Mr. Trump has moved to end.
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But the president squarely put the blame on Democrats on Wednesday, writing that they “refused to take care of DACA. Would have been so easy, but they just didn’t care. I had to fight for Military and start of Wall.”
Mr. Trump’s closing of the DACA program is being challenged in court, and an effort to pass immigration legislation failed last month in the Senate.
Over the weekend, the White House offered to extend protections for DACA recipients for two and a half years in exchange for $25 billion for the border wall, according to congressional aides. Democrats countered by offering $25 billion in wall funding in exchange for a pathway to citizenship for a broader population of Dreamers, which the White House rejected.
An effort by some lawmakers to include in the spending bill a proposal to shore up insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act was unsuccessful, at least in part because of a dispute over abortion. But the bill includes a fix to the so-called grain glitch, a flaw in the sweeping tax overhaul passed last year that stood to hurt certain agricultural businesses.
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Another sticking point in recent days was funding for a series of rail infrastructure projects in the New York City area known as the Gateway program, including a new tunnel under the Hudson River. Despite his New York roots, Mr. Trump zeroed in on Gateway and urged Republican leaders not to provide federal funds for it — an apparent rebuke to Mr. Schumer, whose caucus the president has repeatedly accused of obstructionism.
The spending bill does not include $900 million in funding for Gateway that had been included last year in House legislation. But according to a senior Senate Democratic aide, it includes hundreds of millions of dollars that could go toward the Gateway program, including funds that do not require the approval of Mr. Trump’s Transportation Department.
As November’s midterm elections loom, the legislation also includes $380 million for grants to states to improve their election infrastructure and bolster election security.
And although Congress has shown little appetite for passing significant gun control legislation in response to the mass shooting last month in Parkland, Fla., the spending bill includes a modest measure to improve reporting to the national background check system for gun purchases. It also includes a measure to provide grants to improve school safety.
Congress approved a broad two-year budget deal last month that paved the way for this week’s legislation. That deal set overall spending levels, raising strict limits on military and domestic spending by a total of about $140 billion this year. The spending bill this week allocates the allowed spending among a vast array of federal programs.
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The bill is long overdue, coming almost halfway through the 2018 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1. Since then, Congress has needed five stopgap spending measures to keep the government open. By snapping that streak of short-term patches, lawmakers would provide a dose of stability to federal agencies that have been left in limbo as Congress lurched from one stopgap measure to the next.
Even with the spending bill unveiled, there is still some risk of a brief shutdown this weekend, as any one senator can stop the Senate from speeding up consideration of the bill to meet Friday’s deadline. Last month, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, did just that, causing an hourslong shutdown as he bemoaned the government’s mounting debt.
This time around, with lawmakers expected to vote on a gigantic spending bill with little time to digest its contents, Mr. Paul is unhappy yet again.
“It’s a rotten, terrible, no-good way to run your government,” he said Tuesday, adding, “Really, should we be looking in thousand-page bills with 24 hours to decide what’s in them?”
He was not the only lawmaker with such frustration.
“Whoever designed this process is not qualified to run a food truck,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. “It’s embarrassing. And as bad as it looks from the outside, you ought to see it from the inside.”
The approval of the spending bill would be another blow to those worried about the government’s ballooning debt, which has topped $21 trillion. That issue seemed of little concern on Capitol Hill as Mr. Trump and Republican lawmakers pushed for much more military funding, and Democrats demanded similar increases for domestic priorities. The spending bill will leave lawmakers from both parties with much to boast about, including billions of dollars for infrastructure and for fighting the opioid epidemic, as well as the biggest increase in military funding in years.
“This legislation fulfills our pledge to rebuild the United States military,” Mr. Ryan said after the bill was unveiled, while conceding, “No bill of this size is perfect.”
The spending spree comes on the heels of the Republicans’ tax overhaul, which was projected to add $1.5 trillion to federal budget deficits over a decade. The deficit is now expected to exceed $1 trillion in the 2019 fiscal year, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscal watchdog group.
The spending bill gave the most conservative members of Congress little to celebrate. Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, expressed disappointment with the modest funding for fortifying the border.
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“It is troubling when we get a tunnel and we don’t get a wall,” he said. “The last time I checked, the president didn’t make any promises about getting a tunnel in any of his campaign stops, at least not in North Carolina.”
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Officer who fatally shot Justine Damond is charged with murder
March 21, 2018 by admin
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A police officer who mistakenly shot and killed an Australian woman last July in Minneapolis was indicted on a charge of third-degree murder Tuesday, and the city’s top prosecutor blamed “uncooperative” cops for slowing down the investigation.
Officer Mohamed Noor was also charged with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, according to records from the Hennepin County Jail. Bail was set at $500,000.
Mike Freeman, the Hennepin County attorney, blamed stonewalling by the Minneapolis police for the delay. “This would have been done a good deal quicker if we had gotten cooperation,” he said at a news conference.
Asked for comment, the police union declined to address Freeman’s claims.
Damond, 40, a life coach and motivational speaker from Sydney, called 911 on July 15 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home. When Noor and his partner, Officer Matthew Harrity, drove up in their SUV, Damond walked toward the car.
Harrity, who was at the wheel, said that he was startled by a loud noise just before Damond approached the open driver’s side window and that Noor fired from the passenger seat, striking the woman.
Both officers were wearing body cameras, but they were turned off, as were the headlights of their vehicle. No evidence of any sexual assault was ever found.
Tom Plunkett, a lawyer for Noor, said Freeman “contemplated these charges long before the grand jury investigation he directed was even commenced.”
“The facts will show that Officer Noor acted as he has been trained and consistent with established departmental policy,” Plunkett said in a statement. “Officer Noor should not have been charged with any crime.”
The Ruszczyk family in Australia and the victim’s fiancé, Don Damond, said they welcomed the indictment.
“While we waited over eight months to come to this point, we are pleased with the way a grand jury and County Attorney Mike Freeman appear to have been diligent and thorough in investigating and ultimately determining that these charges are justified,” they said in a statement.
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Damond’s maiden name was Ruszczyk, but she had already started using Damond’s last name. Her death made international news and resulted in the ouster of Police Chief Janeé Harteau.
Noor could go before a judge as early as Wednesday, Freeman said. He has not spoken with investigators.
Asked why it took eight months to bring charges, Freeman blamed the blue wall of silence.
“Many officers refused to answer questions, ” he said. “We therefore had to subpoena them to testify before a grand jury.”
In a statement, the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis did not address Freeman’s assertion that certain police officers did not cooperate with investigators.
“The federation isn’t privy to the details of the criminal case and cannot comment on specifics of the case,” the statement said. “We respect the criminal justice process and wait for the case to proceed before making further comment.”
In December, Freeman told union members that he did not yet have enough evidence to file charges against Noor.
“He won’t answer my questions, because he doesn’t have to, OK?” Freeman said in a videotaped exchange. “We all have Fifth Amendment rights, and I respect that.
“And let me just say, it’s not my fault,” Freeman said in the video. “If it isn’t my fault, who didn’t do their jobs? … Investigators — and they don’t work for me. And they haven’t done their job.”
But on Dec. 18, Freeman apologized for his comments, calling them “ill-advised,” and said he was not aware that he was being recorded.
Noor has been on paid administrative leave since the shooting. Initially, his fate was supposed to be left to prosecutors rather than to a grand jury after the process was criticized as unfair because it rarely results in police officers being charged with crimes.
Freeman said he was forced to change course after officers he wanted to question about the tragic fatal shooting balked at talking with investigators.