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Top Democrats and Republicans said they had an “agreement in principle” on $1.37 trillion in federal spending to keep the government funded through the end of the year.
WASHINGTON — Senior lawmakers announced on Thursday that they had reached a tentative bipartisan agreement on funding the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, offering a solution to avert a shutdown after weeks of haggling over money for President Trump’s border wall and other matters.
Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, and Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, who lead the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, described an “agreement in principle” on $1.37 trillion in federal spending.
“I feel very good that we’ll have a good product that we can vote on, on Tuesday,” Ms. Lowey told reporters, putting the vote days before funding is set to lapse on Dec. 20.
News of the agreement came as the House Judiciary Committee debated articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump, and was the latest instance of an odd dynamic that has taken hold on Capitol Hill, where a year-end burst of compromise has broken out amid the partisan rancor.
If it holds, the tentative deal would put Congress on track to pass an extensive bipartisan spending measure next week around the same time as the House is voting to remove the president and is potentially voting on a revised North American trade pact, another sweeping compromise between Republicans and Democrats. The dozen spending bills, likely to be packaged into multiple bills, will need to pass both chambers and secure the president’s signature before the current short-term spending bill expires next week.
Ms. Lowey and Mr. Shelby announced the deal with their minority counterparts, Representative Kay Granger, Republican of Texas, and Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, after a marathon round of negotiations on Thursday. Ms. Lowey and Mr. Shelby also met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, to iron out sticking points in the legislation.
When Mr. Mnuchin left the Capitol early Thursday afternoon, he told reporters that a list of more than 100 unresolved issues in the dozen bills had been narrowed to a handful.
“We’ll see if we can resolve this quickly,” he said.
By the time the four senior lawmakers wrapped up their second meeting a few hours later, a deal in principle had been struck.
“We believe that we’re where we need to be on this,” Mr. Shelby told reporters. “We feel good with where we are.”
All four lawmakers declined to offer details about the legislation, and indicated that staff members would work through the weekend on specific text, possibly waiting until Monday to describe how lawmakers proposed to allocate the funding.
But people familiar with the agreement, which has not yet been completed, said its current version would maintain existing levels of funding for Mr. Trump’s border wall, devoting $1.375 billion to border barrier construction, and placing no limitations on his ability to transfer funds from other Pentagon accounts.
Still, the agreement will not replace the $3.6 billion in military construction funds that the White House directed toward the border wall, according to two people familiar with the tentative deal, which they described on the condition of anonymity because it was not final.
A federal court late Tuesday also blocked Mr. Trump from using those funds to build a wall, which is likely to be challenged.
The group announced the tentative deal in the same alcove just outside the Capitol rotunda where, 10 months ago, after the nation’s longest government shutdown, they announced an initial agreement over the president’s wall and the remainder of government funding. The memory of that 35-day experience hung over the negotiations, serving as a cautionary tale for the White House and leaders in both parties if they failed to reach an agreement.
“I can feel confident that we will get legislation passed before we leave, and the country will be better off for it,” Mr. Leahy said. “Everybody worked very hard.”
This month, lawmakers rushed to resolve impasses over a number of issues — including Mr. Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall along the southwestern border, his ability to allocate money from other programs to the wall, and Democratic efforts to finance gun violence research, election security and lawmakers’ pet projects.
Republicans, backed by the White House, had pushed to protect funding for Mr. Trump’s border wall, while Democrats fought to deny funds to build new sections of the wall.
Ms. Lowey acknowledged that the compromise would be unlikely to satisfy every member of either party, telling reporters “there are some people in the Congress, in any group that only want 100 percent of what they want, and life isn’t that way.”
“You really can do some good things and you never expect everyone to agree with everything,” she added, her voice hoarse by the end of the day. “You look at the 12 bills, and I think you can be very proud of the work this Congress is doing.”
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus met on Wednesday with Ms. Lowey, Ms. Pelosi and Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the panel responsible for funding the Department of Homeland Security, to voice concerns about how the administration’s immigration policies would be funded.
“Funding for the wall was a sure red-line issue,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said as she left that meeting. “It’s just simply unacceptable.”
But perhaps more compelling for many lawmakers was the prospect of fulfilling their constitutional prerogative to set funding for the federal government for the entire fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, and doing so before members were set to leave for their holiday break next Friday.
Over the summer, lawmakers and the White House reached a bipartisan agreement to raise government spending for the next two years, which offered a rough outline for funding defense and domestic programs. The dozen bills, once completed, will allocate every dollar across a myriad of federal programs.
As Ms. Lowey walked across the Capitol on Thursday afternoon, trailed by reporters, Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, caught up with her and congratulated her on the feat.
“All done, all put to bed, all done, right?” Mr. Hoyer said, grinning broadly as he reached out to shake Ms. Lowey’s hand. “Way to go.”
