Most Georgia Republicans lining up behind $1 trillion spending bill
WASHINGTON -- Several Georgia U.S. House Republicans said today they are prepared to swallow a massive spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and stage a showdown on immigration policy early next year, when Republicans control both chambers.
You can read the 1,600-page bill and the thousand-plus pages of addenda here. Some key points for Georgia:
1. Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gets an extra $1.77 billion in "emergency" money to fight Ebola, as President Barack Obama got most of his funding request.
2. The Savannah Port gets the paltry $1.52 million that Obama requested earlier this year, though the money is moved into a construction account and Congress admonishes the administration's "inexplicable, unjustifiable, and unnecessarily confusing" decision to wait until Congress passed a water resources bill to allow work to begin. Now that WRDA is law and work can begin with state money, it's basically water under the fish ladder, and Port backers hope for a big federal commitment in 2015.
A vote could come in the House as soon as Thursday -- which also is the shutdown deadline. Congress is expected to clear a "continuing resolution" to fund operations for a couple of days to allow the Senate time to pass the bill.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is balking at some of the provisions, which means each Republican vote is crucial. Count Reps. Rob Woodall, R-Lawrenceville; Lynn Westmoreland, R-Coweta County; and Tom Price, R-Roswell; in the "yes" column, based on interviews today.
Tea party leaders said they would protest at Woodall's Lawrenceville office today to try to urge him to vote no because "it gives the money the president needs to get his amnesty program going." But Woodall pointed to House Republican appropriators' finding that they were powerless in this case because Obama is running the immigration program through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services -- which is funded by the fees it collects, not appropriations.
The idea behind the hybrid continuing resolution/omnibus is to only fund the Department of Homeland Security until Feb. 27, but the rest of the government through September, so there can be an immigration showdown in February with a GOP Senate majority.
Said Woodall, of the president's executive action on immigration:
"And what we have done in this 'CRomnibus' is narrow the pool of all of the things that you discuss in funding the entire government to just this one section. It's the best ground on which we can fight. I hope we have some folks out there in this crowd of folks [protesting] that are endorsing that idea.
"I'm not content with just complaining about what's going on in the White House. The tools to fix it won't be available to us until January, and the speaker's commitment is to fight tooth and nail to make that happen."
Price, who proposed a similar "CRomnibus" idea last month, pointed to the Republican wins in the bill:
"It would hold the IRS accountable, make certain money's not going to the International Monetary Fund. We have decreased the funding to the United Nations until they respond to the concerns of the American people. There are some great policies. Is it all good? No, but it's a step in the right direction."
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Gainesville, said that he appreciated the EPA policy riders, particularly restrictions on what the agency can declare as federally regulated waterways. He would not commit to voting for the bill, but sounded like he was leaning that way:
"We're not happy with where we have to be at this point, in a sense of what we're doing, but also ... we've got a lot of good stuff in the bill – policy riders and things that we've been fighting for for years."
In his final days in Congress, Rep. Paul Broun, R-Athens, remains a burr in Republican leaders' saddle. Even before the bill was finally released last night -- though after its outline was well known -- Broun had made up his mind:
"I can't vote for the CRomnibus. It's a tremendous compilation of bigger government, more intrusion in people's lives, creating more debt, depriving people of their freedom and liberty."
