Obama signs $1.1 trillion budget compromise, avoiding government shutdown

After years of dysfunction and abysmal public approval ratings, a chastened, even beaten-down Congress on Friday passed a $1.8 trillion package of spending and tax cuts with remarkably little rancor.

Friday's votes promise to finish up a surprisingly productive, bipartisan burst of late-session legislation in a divided Congress.

Obama has promised to sign the legislation, which includes numerous spending increases he has demanded all year. As for the end of the ban on crude-oil exports, in a letter to colleagues yesterday the House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi argued that "the wind and solar tax credits in the omnibus will eliminate around ten times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add". He secured the votes of 150 Republicans - a majority of the House GOP conference.

It was a win for  House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who managed to keep fiscal hawks in his Republican caucus under control during weeks of talks and avoid the kind of infighting that plagued his predecessor, John Boehner. However, in the hours before the vote, House Democratic leaders were working to shore up support from angry liberals who are threatening to sink the bill over oil exports and fiscal support for Puerto Rico.

"They wanted big oil so much that they gave away the store", Pelosi gloated.

"This is a bill that protects America, rebuilds it and invests in the future", she said. "At least in the House".

He warned that Republicans who supported the measure will get grief from constituents when they go home.

Several Democrats, including party leaders in the House, opposed the bill, warning it is not paid for and will only deepen USA debt.

Both parties scored political coups.

The bill extends more than 50 expiring tax cuts, with more than 20 becoming permanent, including credits for companies' expenditures for research and equipment purchases and reductions for lower-earning families and households with children and college students. Nevertheless, the revenue and spending measures enacted this year did little to curb the biggest long-term driver of deficits-so-called entitlement spending that isn't subject to the annual appropriations process.

The spending measure awards increases of about 6 percent, on average, above tight spending caps that were a relic of a 2011 budget and debt deal, and were opposed by both GOP defense hawks and Democrats seeking boosts in domestic spending.

Pelosi told reporters that adding the oil export ban to the spending bill made it "very difficult" to convince some Democrats to vote for the legislation, but also said that by allowing it to be included, Democrats were able to extract concessions of their own, including an extension of renewable energy tax credits. The package is on its way to President Obama's desk for his signature.

Democrats said the flurry of action reflected their willingness to work with their GOP counterparts. "But that's the nature of legislation and compromise, and I think the system worked".

Democrats, who are the minority in both chambers but whose votes were needed to pass the bill, blocked many other GOP efforts to include policies cutting off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, halting admission of Syrian and Iraqi refugees and paring back many financial and environmental regulations. Despite the opposition, Obama did not veto the entire bill over the matter.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican presidential candidate who was on the campaign trail and skipped the vote, criticized the bill from afar, saying Washington rammed the deal through "in secret".

Also crammed into the two bills are provisions trimming some of the taxes that help finance Obama's prized 2010 health care overhaul, including two-year suspension of a tax on medical devices and, in a victory for unions, a two-year postponement of a "Cadillac tax" on higher-cost insurance policies.