Appropriations

Republicans in the Senate, meanwhile, voted to block their chamber’s version because they said overall proposed spending levels were too high. Lawmakers could revisit some of those battles this year, but their differences might be tempered with the overall cap on domestic spending already set. Moreover, many of the transportation grants funded by the bill are politically popular and members may not want to oppose them in an election year. Some partisan splits could, however, emerge over affordable housing programs funded in the HUD portion of the bill, but the Obama administration might have headed off that opposition by scaling back current HUD funding by $1 billion to a proposed $32.6 billion for fiscal 2015.