WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate gave final approval to a bipartisan budget bill on Wednesday, sending it to President Obama ahead of a winter recess.
The task now falls to House and Senate appropriators to fill in the details — the budget deal sets general spending guidelines but lawmakers have to write specific provisions later. That work needs to be done by mid-January.
Lawmakers are already looking to fix some of what they consider problems in the deal. Both Minnesota senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, signed on to a bill last night to replace cuts to veterans’ pensions built into the budget plan. The bill would close corporate tax loopholes to restore the cuts, which makes it unlikely win GOP support, but it’s symptomatic of lawmakers’ general reluctance surrounding the budget deal.
“I think that we need to make cuts to military spending but not take it from the pensions of our veterans, so that I didn’t like,” Franken said on Tuesday. “Did I come here to vote for those kinds of things? No, I didn’t come here to do that, but I did come here to try and create some kind of regular order so we could tackle the kinds of problems people want us to tackle.”
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate is likely to consider an extension of expiring emergency unemployment insurance when it reconvenes in January. Many Democrats have said they’re upset the budget deal didn’t extend the program — which expires Dec. 28 — though some Republicans have said they’d be open to doing so, as long as there is a way to pay for it.
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com.
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Would it be so hard
To pass good legislation in the first place? Both of our Senators continue to support laws and then say that they are against (parts) of them. Having it both ways is wonderful, if only the rest of us weren’t stuck with their poor decisions.