WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and the White House have reached agreement on a massive year-end tax and spending package, House Speaker Paul Ryan told GOP lawmakers late Tuesday, urging support for the legislation that delivers GOP wins but also includes many Democratic priorities.
The package would fund the government through the 2016 budget year, raise domestic and defense spending, and increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars by extending numerous popular tax credits without paying for them. It lifts the 40-year-old ban on exporting US crude, a long-sought GOP goal, and delays two taxes meant to pay for President Obama’s health care law, one on high-value health plans and the other on medical devices.
Democrats won five-year extensions of wind and solar credits and a permanent extension of the child care tax credit and beat back many GOP attempts to add favored policy provisions to the bill, including several aimed at rolling back Obama environmental regulations.
‘‘This is divided government,’’ Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota, said coming out of the meeting. ‘‘If you’re going to move forward and follow Speaker Ryan’s notion that we move onto offense next year. . . . Let’s put 2015 behind us and move onto 2016.’’
Ryan ‘‘said that in a divided government you’re going to have some concessions, that’s what compromise is about,’’ added Representative Reid Ribble of Wisconsin.
Democratic aides cautioned final language was still being worked out.
Republican leaders predicted the package would come to a vote in the House and Senate on Thursday, allowing lawmakers to head home for the holidays having completed their needed tasks. First they will have to pass another short-term funding extension, since the current one runs out Wednesday at midnight.
Eleventh-hour negotiations twisted and turned on the mammoth deal pairing the $1.1 trillion spending legislation with a giant tax bill catering to a number of special interests. The deal, Congress’ last major piece of unfinished business for the year, became the vehicle for countless long-sought priorities and odds and ends, including reform of visa-free travel to the United States, renewable energy tax credits, and health benefits for 9/11 first responders.
Democrats, despite their minority party status in Congress, exacted a steep price in the negotiations, thanks to Obama’s veto pen and Republicans’ need for their votes on the spending bill. ‘‘We may not be in the majority but we’re feeling that these goals are on track,’’ boasted Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.
The package ignored conservative demands for language clamping down on Syrian refugees entering the United States. Instead it contains changes tightening up the ‘‘visa waiver’’ program that allows visa-free travel to the United States for citizens of 38 countries, including France and Belgium, where many of last month’s Paris attackers were from.
Republicans and some Democrats were behind the push to delay taxes from Obama’s health care law on high-cost health insurance policies, which don’t take effect until 2018, and suspend the current 2.3 percent tax on some medical devices. The so-called Cadillac tax on high-value health plans would be delayed until 2020 and the medical device tax suspended for two years.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest sounded resigned to Obama signing a bill lifting the crude oil export ban despite previous threats to veto the measure as stand-alone legislation. Environmentalists say lifting it would amount to a windfall for the oil industry.