The US
House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn budget, hours before government
was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday.
The
Republican measure was passed by 219 votes to 206 after President Barack Obama
had urged Democrats to support the budget.
It will
fund most of the government until September 2015, but some areas will only
receive short-term funding. Continue..
Republicans
won control of both House and Senate in elections last month.
A
relieved John Boehner, the Republicans' House leader, said: "Thank you and
Merry Christmas."
Fifty-seven
Democrats voted for the bill, but others were angry about the president's call
for support of the Republican bill, with Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi
saying she was "enormously disappointed" at Mr Obama's position.
Immigration
issue
The Republicans
strongly oppose President Obama's immigration reforms and so the bill only
funds the Department of Homeland Securityuntil February.
Republicans hope that
when the new congress meets at the start of next year, they can force changes
to the president's immigration plans.
The budget bill must
now be passed by the Senate and sent to the president to sign into law.
A two-day extension of
government funding was approved by the Senate on Thursday to give it time to
pass the main budget.
Senate Majority leader
Harry Reid said that his chamber would begin looking at the legislation on
Friday.
The bill funds the
government at the same levels that were negotiated last December.
It also adds emergency
funding requested by President Barack Obama, including funds to fight Ebola in
West Africa and money for US air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
As presented earlier
in the week, the 1,600 page bill also includes a number of provisions intended
to gain votes from both parties, including:
·
increasing the amount
an individual person can contribute to a national political party from $32,400
to $324,000
·
blocks the District of
Columbia from using its own funds to set up regulatory systems for marijuana
legalisation
·
measures that would
significantly weaken new regulations about risky financial instruments called
swaps
·
blocking certain
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations
·
cuts in the budgets of
the EPA and the US tax agency
·
increases in the
budget for Wall Street regulation agencies, including the Securities and
Exchange Commission.
A number of Democrats
were unhappy at what they saw as unnecessary concessions made to Republicans in
order to pass the bill.
"We don't like
lobbying that is being done by the president or anybody else that allows us
to... give a big gift to Wall Street," Democrat congresswoman Maxine
Waters said.
For their part,
several Republicans argued that the deal did not go far enough in putting curbs
on President Obama's plan to grant work visas to millions of workers who had
entered the US illegally.
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