Senate clears bill to avert partial shutdown
The Senate gave final approval Friday to a $460 billion spending bill to fund about half the federal government through the fall, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden's desk with just hours to spare to avert a partial shutdown.
The lopsided 75-22 vote cemented a resolution to at least part of a spending stalemate that consumed Congress for months and has repeatedly pushed the government to the edge of shutdown. Biden was expected to sign it before a midnight deadline to keep federal funding flowing.
But top lawmakers were still negotiating spending bills for the other half of the government over the same period, including for the Pentagon, which Congress must pass by March 22 to avert a shutdown. Several thorny issues, including funding for the Department of Homeland Security, have yet to be resolved.
The legislation passed Friday packages together six spending bills, extending funding through Sept. 30 for dozens of federal programs covering agriculture, energy and the environment, transportation, housing, the Justice Department and veterans.
“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise,” said
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader. “It helps parents and veterans and firefighters and farmers and school cafeterias and more.”
The package adheres to the funding levels negotiated last year by Biden and the House speaker at the time, Kevin McCarthy, keeping spending on domestic programs essentially flat — even as funding for veterans' programs continues to grow — while allowing military spending to increase slightly.
Democrats rejected the most divisive Republican policy demands, including a bid to defund a new rule by the Food and Drug Administration allowing mifepristone — the first pill used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen — to be distributed through the mail and at retail locations, and efforts to cut and restrict nutritional benefits for lowincome families.
“Today, we got the first half of the job done — passing a serious bipartisan package to fund key parts of our government,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chair of the Appropriations Committee. “This isn't the bill I would have written on my own, but this is a strong bipartisan package.”
House Republicans secured some smaller victories, including modest cuts to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the FBI; and environmental programs, though some of the reductions were far smaller than they appeared. And they won the inclusion of a measure curtailing a policy instituted by the Veterans Affairs Department that aims to prevent veteran suicides by flagging a federal gun background check system when veterans are found to lack the mental capacity to handle their own finances.
One Democrat ultimately opposed the spending legislation because of the inclusion of that policy.
“I'm voting no because I do not accept a return to a time when the gun lobby could bury gun riders in appropriations bills (which happened frequently before Sandy Hook),” Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., said in a statement.