Averting an election-year crisis, the US Congress late on Wednesday sent US President Barack Obama a bill to keep the government operating through Dec. 9 and provide US$1.1 billion in long-delayed funding to battle the Zika virus.
The US House of Representatives cleared the measure by a 342-85 vote just hours after a bipartisan US Senate tally. The votes came after top congressional leaders broke through a stalemate over aid to help Flint, Michigan, address its water crisis.
Democratic advocates for Flint said they were satisfied with renewed guarantees that Flint will get funding later this year to help rid its water system of lead.
The hybrid spending measure was Capitol Hill’s last major to-do item before the election and its completion allows lawmakers to jet home to campaign to save their jobs. Congress will not return to Washington until the week after election day for what promises to be a difficult lame-duck session.
The bill caps months of wrangling over money to fight the Zika virus. It also includes US$500 million for rebuilding assistance to flood-ravaged Louisiana and other states.
The White House said Obama will sign the measure and praised the progress on Flint.
The temporary spending bill sped through the House shortly after the chamber passed a water projects bill containing the breakthrough compromise on Flint. The move to add the Flint package to the water projects bill, negotiated by top leaders in both parties and passed on Wednesday by a 284-141 vote, was the key to lifting the Democratic blockade on the separate spending bill.
The deal averted a potential federal shutdown and came just three days before deadline. It defused a lengthy, frustrating battle over Zika spending. Democrats claimed a partial victory on Flint while the GOP-dominated Louisiana delegation won a downpayment on Obama’s US$2.6 billion request for their state.
The temporary government-wide spending bill had stalled in the senate on Tuesday over Democrats’ demands that the measure include US$220 million in senate-passed funding to help Flint and other cities deal with lead-tainted water. Democrats were initially unwilling to accept promises that Flint funding would come after the election, but relented after they won stronger assurances from top GOP leaders like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and agreed to address the city’s crisis in the separate water development bill.
The Flint issue arose as the final stumbling block after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell added the flood aid for Louisiana to the spending bill.
Democrats argued it was unfair that the water crisis in Flint has gone on for more than a year with no assistance, while Louisiana and other states are getting US$500 million for floods that occurred just last month.
Democrats played a strong hand in the negotiations and had leverage because Republicans were eager to avoid a politically harmful shutdown six weeks before the election.
Maneuvering and campaign-season gamesmanship between Republicans and Democrats had slowed efforts to pass the temporary spending measure, once among the most routine of Capitol Hill’s annual activities. A longstanding stalemate over Zika funding spilled on to the measure, which many GOP conservatives disliked because it guarantees a lame-duck session that is likely to feature post-election compromises that they will oppose.
McConnell has made numerous concessions in weeks of negotiations, agreeing, for instance, to drop contentious provisions tied to Zika funding that led Democrats to block prior Zika measures.
Many House Republicans have opposed helping Flint, arguing that the city’s problems are a local issue and that many cities have problems with aging water systems.
Flint’s drinking water became tainted when the city, then under state control, began drawing from the Flint River in 2014 to save money. Regulators failed to ensure the water was treated properly and lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply.
There were other winners and losers in the scramble to produce the legislation.
Democrats and some Republicans were thwarted in an attempt to allow the Export-Import Bank to approve export deals exceeding US$10 million even though it lacks a quorum. Senator Ted Cruz failed to win a provision to block the US government from transferring the Department of Commerce role in governing the Internet’s domain name addressing systems to nonprofit consortium ICANN.
Democrats failed to use the bill to reverse a ban engineered last year by McConnell on proposals to allow the US Securities and Exchange Commission to require publicly traded corporations to disclose political spending permitted under the US Supreme Court’s 2010 decision allowing unlimited political spending by businesses.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese