{"id":100879,"date":"2018-03-23T14:50:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T20:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-signs-spending-bill-averts-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2018-03-23T14:50:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T20:50:43","slug":"trump-signs-spending-bill-averts-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trump-signs-spending-bill-averts-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump signs spending bill, averts shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President
President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington on Friday about the $1.3 trillion spending bill. Trump had threatened to veto the spending measure, but he relented and signed the measure that averted a government shutdown.<\/span>Manuel Balce Ceneta\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump\u2019s veto threat was the final step of a process marked by uncertainty. The House of Representatives passed the bill 256-167 around 1 p.m. Thursday, just 17 hours after the 2,232 page bill was released.<\/p>\n

The Senate overcame a brief hold placed on the bill around midnight by an Idaho senator upset that the bill included language renaming an Idaho forest after the former governor of his state \u2013 an old political rival. The Senate passed the bill 65-32, sending it to the president\u2019s desk before just 1 a.m. Friday. Trump signed it after a brief veto threat Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat, voted in favor of the legislation funding the government through Sept. 30. Sen. Cory Gardner, a Republican, opposed the bill, citing the cost.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of lurching from one short-term spending measure to another, this bill provides some much needed certainty,\u201d Bennet said in a news release.<\/p>\n

The omnibus includes a restructuring of the Forest Service budget to fight wildfires that Bennet and Gardner pushed to be in the bill.<\/p>\n

The bill ends \u201cfire borrowing,\u201d a budgetary practice that forced the Forest Service to draw from other fire-prevention and non-fire funds in its yearly budget when fighting forest fires.<\/p>\n

The Department of Interior and National Forest Service don\u2019t have natural disaster funds like other federal agencies. Instead, they are required to draw from funds designated for fire prevention and other non-fire funds to pay to fight fires.<\/p>\n

This practice, referred to as \u201cfire borrowing,\u201d has depleted agency resources as the Forest Service has had to spend more money on fighting wildfires each year as fire seasons get longer and more intense.<\/p>\n

\u201cYear after year, much of the West is forced to deal with horrible wildfires that burn millions of acres, and funding that should be applied to fire prevention and mitigation projects is instead spent by the Forest Service fighting these fires,\u201d Gardner said in a news release when the bill was unveiled.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, the Forest Service spent more than 50 percent of its annual budget fighting forest fires, raiding other forest-maintenance programs to pay for it.<\/p>\n

The legislation freezes the 10-year average cost used to budget for wildfires from fiscal year 2015. In addition, the legislation establishes a disaster fund \u2013 more than $20 billion over 10 years \u2013 that can be accessed after the Forest Service exceeds the budgeted amount.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bipartisan fix transforms and modernizes the Forest Service\u2019s capacity to restore forest health and mitigate and fight wildfires,\u201d Bennet said in a news release Wednesday night. \u201cIt allows the Forest Service to complete the entirety of its mission, without being undermined by the pressures of fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Southwestern Colorado is currently experiencing \u201cextreme drought,\u201d according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. That means Southwest Colorado is at risk of a bad wildfire season this summer. Just last week, homes were evacuated in Pueblo and El Paso Counties as a forest fire burned more than 2,000 acres.<\/p>\n

The omnibus bill, which is expected to be the last major legislation passed before midterm elections in November, also included $4 billion in federal funds to help states combat rampant opioid addiction, including $1 billion in State Opioid Response Grants.<\/p>\n

Colorado was granted a $7.8 million, two-year State Opioid Response Grant in April 2017. In an interview with The Durango Herald two weeks ago, Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, called the grant \u201cfar too little\u201d to combat opioid addiction in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201c(This measure) includes the largest investment to date to help combat the opioid epidemic that is impacting communities in Colorado, and funds critical community health centers,\u201d Tipton, who voted for the bill, said.<\/p>\n

Bennet additionally praised a $600 million program that will allow Colorado communities to compete for grants to expand broadband service.<\/p>\n

Congress also set aside just $1.6 billion in funding for President Donald Trump\u2019s border wall, a fraction of the $25 billion the president wanted. There is nothing in the bill addressing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump ended in September.<\/p>\n

A Gardner aide said the two Colorado senators are continuing to push their joint immigration legislation \u2013 a 12-year path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers and $25 billion for a border wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this spending bill included many things I fought for, such as a wildfire funding fix, a pay raise for our troops, and more opioid funding, I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that spent $1.3 trillion dollars and burdens our children with even more debt,\u201d Gardner said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n

Congress is now out of session until April 9.<\/p>\n

Andrew Eversden is an intern for The Journal and a student at American University in Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump speaks in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington on Friday about the $1.3 trillion spending bill. Trump had threatened to veto the spending measure, but he relented and signed the measure that averted a government shutdown.Manuel Balce Ceneta\/Associated Press Trump\u2019s veto threat was the final step of a process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1724,1137,23,24,25],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-budgets-and-budgeting","tag-donald-trump","tag-u-s-rep-scott-tipton","tag-u-s-sen-cory-gardner","tag-u-s-sen-michael-bennet"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100879"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}