The best negotiator -
From Reddit:
Here are some of the ways Democrats won out in this bill, despite being in the minority in both houses:
• $1.6 billion for border fencing, but with the specification that it only apply to existing designs, meaning no wall.
• The Fix NICS Act, which modestly improves the existing gun background-check system, plus a provision instructing the Centers for Disease Control that it is free to conduct research on gun violence. Such research was effectively stopped in 1996.
• A slight increase to the IRS budget. While not nearly what the agency needs, especially given the challenge of implementing the new tax law, at least it doesn’t continue the long-standing GOP effort to starve the IRS of funds and make enforcement a joke.
• $380 million in assistance to states to improve the security of their election systems, and $300 million to the FBI to combat Russian hacking of those systems.
• No repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from endorsing candidates and acting as political organizations. President Trump has advocated that the amendment be repealed.
• A bar on employers such as restaurants keeping any portion of workers’ tips. The Trump Labor Department had proposed allowing tip “pooling,” including letting the boss control and potentially take workers’ tips.
• Increases for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Trump had proposed eliminating them entirely.
• No cuts to the EPA (Trump had proposed cutting the agency’s budget by a third) and an increase in funding for clean energy research through ARPA-E, which Trump had proposed eliminating entirely.
• Increased funding for affordable housing.
• Increased education funding, along with what nearly everyone is describing as a complete rejection of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s agenda.
• Increased funding for the National Institutes of Health.
• A doubling of child-care funding for low-income families.
• No defunding of sanctuary cities or Planned Parenthood.
Edit: Some additional stuff from this Vox article:
• The White House wanted to strip $900 million in funding for the Gateway project, a $30 billion endeavor to add a new commuter rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York under the Hudson River. Ultimately, the $900 million wasn’t included, but hundreds of millions in unallocated funding that could wind up going to the project did make it in.
• The Census Bureau will get another $1.34 billion, a Democratic priority.
• The Community Development Block Grant program, a flexible federal funding program for cities and local governments, is being nearly doubled from $2.8 billion to $5.2 billion, despite Trump’s prior proposals to eliminate it.
• TIGER, a grant program for transportation projects inaugurated by Obama’s stimulus, is seeing its budget tripled to $1.5 billion.