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The U.S. House is set to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill that includes a banking provision opposed by many Democrats as a giveaway to large institutions.

Current funding for the government ends today, and the measure would finance most of the government through September 2015. The House also plans to pass a two-day stopgap spending bill to give the Senate until Dec. 13 to vote on the measure and avoid a government shutdown.

The banking language, insisted upon by Republicans, would ease rules enacted to protect taxpayers against bank losses after souring derivatives trades helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. The dispute over the banking rule is a preview of Republican plans to roll back other business regulations when they take control of both chambers in 2015.

The provision would put taxpayers back on the hook for Wall Streets riskiest behavior, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said yesterday.

Though Pelosi opposes the banking provision, she stopped short of urging fellow House Democrats to vote against the bill, said a leadership aide who sought anonymity.

A deal on the measure was announced Dec. 9 after Senate Democratic negotiators accepted the banking rule changes and Republican demands on other policy provisions. Republicans oppose changes to the measure and said theyre not reopening negotiations.

House Republicans say they will have the votes to pass the bill without support from Pelosi because other Democrats, including retiring Representative Jim Moran of Virginia, are willing to back it.

House Speaker John Boehner told reporters yesterday he looks forward to it passing with bipartisan majorities in the House and the Senate in the coming days.

Senate opponents led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts arent threatening to hold the bill up. Chief negotiator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the Senate Appropriations chair, is standing by the deal.

The banking provision would let JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C) and other lenders keep swaps trading in units with federal backstops.

Excerpt from:
Democrats Criticize Bank Plan in Spending Bill as Deadline Nears

Democratic lawmakers wanted to use a year-end spending bill to punish U.S. companies that moved their tax addresses overseas by barring them from getting government contracts. It didnt work.

In the end, all the Democrats got was new language that may not affect any companies and a renewed provision that has proved ineffective in the past.

Its fairly watered down, Representative Ander Crenshaw, a Florida Republican, said of the corporate tax inversion language that applies across the U.S. government. Democrats wanted to strengthen that, and I think most people are happy that that didnt happen.

The policy is a victory for companies including Medtronic Inc. (MDT) and Tyco International Plc (TYC), which have millions of dollars in U.S. contracts and will be able to keep their business with the government. Medtronic is moving its tax address to Ireland next year and Tyco completed an inversion in 1997.

The language in the 1,603-page spending plan to fund the government represents the latest setback to Democrats efforts to prevent companies from inverting or punish them if they do. Inversion plans by companies such as Burger King Worldwide Inc. and Pfizer Inc. (PFE) have brought national attention to the issue.

Democrats including Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois have been trying to use tax law or contracting rules to curb the practice.

The spending bill, which will avert a government shutdown after funding expires this week, includes two limits on federal contracts to inverted companies.

The first continues an existing rule. Lawmakers prohibited some companies that had completed inversions from receiving contracts from the Department of Homeland Security starting in 2002, and temporarily expanded the ban across the federal government in 2007.

Similar one-year bans were enacted in four of the following six years.

That hasnt stopped some of the companies from winning U.S. government contracts by exploiting gaps in the rules.

Read more from the original source:
Inversion Curb Democrats Sought Watered Down in New Bill

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) -- A backlash from Democrats over add-ons to a massive government spending bill is throwing passage of the measure into doubt and once again raising concerns about a government shutdown.

The House is slated to vote on the legislation Thursday, just hours before agencies run out of money.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill authorizes funding for virtually all agencies through September, but some Democrats on Capitol Hill are vowing to oppose the legislation, arguing that the addition of some key policy changes amount to a giveaway for big special interests. Congress must pass some type of legislation by Thursday at midnight to avert a shutdown.

READ: What's tucked into the spending bill

The top concerns from Democrats center on a proposal to ease banking regulations in the Dodd-Frank law and a measure that would allow wealthy donors to give considerably more money to the political parties.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the provisions were "destructive to middle class families and to the practice to our democracy" and demanded they be stripped out of the bill. Pelosi's position is critical because House Republicans need Democratic support for the measure to pass.

Though Republicans hold a significant majority in the House, Speaker John Boehner is expected to lose anywhere from 40 to 60 conservatives in his party who oppose the bill because it doesn't block the President's immigration executive action. Democrats will need to provide votes to offset those losses, setting up the sort of political brinksmanship that has become typical in Washington.

A shutdown remains unlikely because lawmakers could agree at the last minute to approve a bill that would keep the government running for a few months -- when Republicans will have full control of Congress.

House GOP aides say they are surprised Pelosi and others are lobbying for changes, since Democrats signed off on the bill before its release.

Continued here:
Democratic backlash throws spending bill in doubt

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