US Congress passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown
The House passed a short-term spending bill on Thursday, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk with just two days left before government funding runs out.
The House approved the bill in a vote of 314 to 108, with107Republicans and207 Democrats supporting the proposal. The House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, took up the bill under suspension of the rules, so he needed two-thirds of the chamber to support the legislation to get it passed. In a potentially worrisome sign for Johnson, 106 Republicans opposed the bill as hard-right members of the conference called for steeper spending cuts.
The president is expected to sign the bill as soon as it reaches his desk, averting a government shutdown that would have started at 12.01am on Saturday morning. The bill, which represents the third stopgap spending measure of this fiscal year, will extend government funding at current levels until 1 March for some government agencies and until 8 March for others.
The House vote came hours after the Senate approved the bill in a vote of 77 to 18, following bipartisan negotiations that stretched into late
Wednesday evening. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, praised the bill as a vital measure that would allow lawmakers more time to negotiate over full-year appropriations bills.
“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for the country, for our veterans, for parents and children, and for farmers and small businesses – all of whom would have felt the sting had the government shut down,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “And this is what the American people want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos. No spectacle. No shutdown.”
But as Schumer noted, that view is not shared by all members of Congress. Hard-right members of the House have expressed outrage over Schumer and Johnson’s framework for a fullyear budget bill, which would set a topline of government spending at $1.66tn. They have urged their colleagues to vote against the stopgap funding bill to protest what they view as out-of-control government spending.
“The American people didn’t give Republicans the House to keep spending like [former Democratic House speaker] Nancy Pelosi so we can buy time to spend EVEN MORE than she did,” Congressman Chip Roy, a hardright congressman of Texas, said on Wednesday. “This is what surrender looks like – House Republicans should give it a hard no.”
Johnson’s decision to overlook hard-right members’ objections could pose a threat to his job, as the former Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted last year after introducing a similar stopgap measure to prevent a shutdown. But so far, House Republicans have shown little appetite to relive the chaos and embarrassment that followed McCarthy’s removal, when the chamber remained at a standstill for weeks as their conference repeatedly failed to elect a new speaker.
The bill’s passage does offer one additional benefit to all members of Congress; it will allow them to leave Washington before the city is hit with another wave of snowfall. Forecasts indicate that the region may get up to 3in of snow on Friday.