WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US House of Representatives approved a belated 410-billion-dollar package that pays for government operations until October 1 and eases Cold War-inspired restrictions on Cuba.
Two weeks after the Democratic-led Congress passed Obama's 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, the lawmakers voted 245-178 in favor of the legislation.
The legislation now heads to the Senate, where Republicans who oppose it as bloated and wasteful have more tools to trim or stall it and where ardent Cuba foes could still seek to block any effort seen as lifting pressure on Havana.
US President Barack Obama has said he supports easing travel to the island and cash remittances from relatives working in the United States to loved ones in Cuba, but has resisted calls to lift the entire decades-old US embargo.
The budget bill would block enforcement of rules that keep Cuban-Americans from visiting their homeland more than once every three years, allowing them to visit once per year instead.
It would also expand the definition of "close relative" to allow Cuban-Americans to visit cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles, in addition to parents, grandparents, children and siblings.
The bill would allow Cuban Americans to spend up to 179 dollars per day while in Cuba, and would also ease some restrictions on food and medicine sales to Cuba.
Republicans have denounced the package's eight-percent spending increase overall and a multitude of pet projects in the mammoth measure.
The measure includes about 20.5 billion dollars for the US Department of Agriculture, including two billion to help the Food and Drug Administration to improve food security.
One clause forbids the department from allowing imports of potentially harmful poultry from China.
The US Justice Department would get some 57.7 billion dollars, including 7.1 billion for the FBI in a bid to help the bureau hire 280 new agents and 271 analysts.
Foreign affairs monies run about 36.6 billion dollars, including 2.4 billion for Israel and 1.5 billion for Egypt.
The legislation also includes hundreds of individual pet projects known as "earmarks" that have drawn fire, chiefly from Republicans, with government revenues feeling the pinch of the global financial crisis.
"This is absolutely crazy," Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner said in an online video. "We need some spending sanity here in Washington."
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