WASHINGTON (CNN) — The House overwhelmingly backed a $1.1 trillion spending package on Friday that avoids a government shutdown and funds federal agencies through next fall.
The 316-113 vote was as major victory for new House Speaker Paul Ryan, who secured the support of at least 150 Republicans. Ryan’s predecessor, John Boehner, rarely got that kind of backing from Republicans on a spending bill when ran the House.
The Senate is slated to vote on the measure later Friday before sending it to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it into law.
The bipartisan deal marks the first major fiscal package negotiated by Ryan, and the debate is a marked departure from previous spending fights that were full of drama right before the deadline and internal back-biting inside the House Republican conference.
But just like Boehner, Ryan needed some help from Democrats to pass the funding measure because of opposition from conservatives to spending levels and what some see as a surrender to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on key policy riders.
Pelosi doesn’t have a unified caucus either: Many Democrats criticized the legislation because it removes a decades-old ban on crude oil exports and omits financial protections for Puerto Rico, which is struggling with a debt crisis.
Incensed members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus seized on these two issues in the past two days and argued the bill should be defeated. Multiple Democrats say the GOP has roughly only 100 votes for the spending deal, and will still need to get the vast majority of House Democrats on board to get to the 218 needed.
Asked on Thursday whether she could provide the votes to get the deal through on Friday, Pelosi replied flatly: “no.”
And in what appeared like a warning to Ryan and his party, Pelosi said, “They have the majority. They have the legislation. We have some serious objections, which we’ve made known all along. So, we’ll see.”
But Pelosi and her top lieutenants still worked to get the bill passed.
They told Democrats at a closed-door meeting that while they weren’t thrilled with the deal, on balance there are still things in it worth supporting, such as a health program for 9/11 first responders and increased spending for other key domestic priorities. They warned if the bill didn’t pass, Republicans would still end up getting the tax cuts that were negotiated alongside the spending bill, and Democrats would be short-changing a host of programs they have fought to give more resources.
The House on Thursday easily passed the $620 billion tax cut package, and the Senate hopes to clear Friday and send to President Barack Obama for his signature. Notably, 77 Democrats joined the majority of Republicans to back it.
“At the end of the day, you walk out with less of what you wanted, and more of what you didn’t want. I think that’s inadvisable,” New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel said Thursday.
Ryan has repeatedly stressed he doesn’t like rolling up all the spending bills, along with a myriad of policy provisions, into one measure. And he has actively made clear he believes the House is simply finishing the work left by Boehner.
“We inherited a process, a cake that was pretty much more than half-baked,” Ryan said Thursday.
Conservatives complained that Ryan didn’t include some items they wanted, such as new restrictions on Syrian refugees coming into the country or limits on federal dollars for Planned Parenthood. But the speaker argued that in divided government, there was a limit to what Democrats could accept and said it contained “some big wins for the country, whether it’s lifting the oil export ban, increasing military spending or renewing health care for the 9/11 first responders.”