Senate passes $1.2T spending bill
Vote comes after brief shutdown overnight
WASHINGTON – It’s finally over: the Senate passed the final six spending bills needed to fund the government until September after a short funding lapse in the wee hours of Saturday morning. It capped a series of dramatic spending fights that stretched over months.
The $1.2 trillion spending package passed the early Saturday with a 74-24 vote after a long negotiation over additional policy votes with hard-right senators. Government funding ran out at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, but because the bill will be enacted over the weekend, the effects of the shutdown will be very limited.
“It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “It wasn’t easy, but tonight, our persistence has been worth it.”
President Joe Biden on Saturday signed the bill into law.
He described the package, which Congress overwhelmingly passed in the early hours of Saturday, as investing in Americans as well as strengthening the economy and national security. The Democratic president urged Congress to pass other bills stuck in the legislative chambers.
“The House must pass the bipartisan national security supplemental to advance our national security interests,” Biden said in a statement. “And Congress must pass the bipartisan border security agreement, the toughest and fairest reforms in decades, to ensure we have the policies and funding needed to secure the border. It’s time to get this done.”
The bill finalizes funding for several key agencies that represent around 70% of federal government spending, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury, Labor and Education.
The vote came after hours of negotiations between conservative senators and Democratic Senate leadership over a series of policy amendments, including ones that would cut overall spending or implement new immigration policies.
Without an agreement to speed up the process, the vote would have taken place on Monday. But Schumer agreed to a handful of amendment votes in exchange for an expedited vote.
On Friday, the bill passed the House 286-134. Democrats have repeatedly carried spending bills and funding extensions across the finish line in recent months, illustrating the deep divisions within the Republican conference.
The funding package drew intense backlash from hard-right conservative lawmakers in the House, who have railed against most of the bipartisan deals passed in recent months.
They have argued that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., should have threatened a government shutdown to force additional concessions from Democrats. Johnson and most other House Republicans have maintained that shutting down the government was not an option.
Hard-right members cited myriad frustrations, arguing the spending package didn’t go far enough to crack down on migration at the southern border; that it didn’t cut spending enough; or because the appropriations bills combined include $14.6 billion dollars in earmarks for state and local projects.
After the bill passed the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a motion to kick Johnson out of leadership – though she intentionally left out a feature that would have forced a vote on the resolution within two working days. “It’s more of a warning and a pink slip,” she said.
Once the bill got to the Senate, the pressure was on to strike a deal before the midnight deadline.
Because the upper chamber requires all 100 senators to agree to speed up proceedings, ultraconservative senators were able to force their peers to vote on amendments to the legislation. All 10 amendments voted on Friday were defeated, though some senators took the opportunity to similarly raise concerns with the spending bills on the Senate floor.
“Congress is poised to do what no American family would ever do,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who offered an amendment that would cut overall spending by 5%. “Congress is poised to spend a third more dollars than they receive. It’s reckless, it leads to inflation.”
Still, Republican leaders touted several of their own victories from the bipartisan compromise.
GOP negotiators championed an increase in funding for 22,000 border patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention bed capacity for migrants at the southern border.
They also halted funding for UNRWA, a United Nations relief agency that is providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza after Israel’s allegations that 12 of the agency’s staffers abetted Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Many of the 22 House Democrats who voted against the bill opposed the elimination of funding for the aid organization.
Democrats were also able to tout their own wins, hailing a new $1 billion investment in child care and Head Start, an early-childhood development program. They also secured new funding for Alzheimer’s and cancer research, among other initiatives.
The spending bills passed around six months into the fiscal year it was intended to fund, and it was a rocky road to get there.
It all started last May, when thenHouse Speaker Kevin McCarthy, RCalif., and President Joe Biden struck a deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for caps on future spending, dubbed “The Fiscal Responsibility Act.”
He paid for it with his job. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led the charge to oust him from the speakership. Three chaotic weeks followed until Johnson was elected to lead the chamber.
Johnson then faced similar pressure from his right flank to extract more policy wins from Democrats. The funding deadline was extended three times as negotiators failed to reach a deal before finally reaching an agreement on the bills in March.
Contributing: Reuters