Congress votes for spending bill without Trump energy cuts; Trump signs bill [update]

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On Friday morning, the US Senate passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that could avert yet another government shutdown. Although the bill covers the breadth of US government activities, one interesting outcome of budget negotiations is that the spending bill reflects none of President Trump's most drastic proposed cuts to Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) renewable energy and early-stage energy programs.

In fact, the omnibus spending bill, which would secure funding out to September 2018, even increased the budgets of some renewable energy programs.

Update: Trump signed the bill Friday afternoon after threatening to veto it. Politico reported on Thursday that the president was in favor of the bill, but on Friday he tweeted that he might veto it due to the fact that the bill did not include funding for a border wall.

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