The Senate passed a stopgap government funding bill on Thursday afternoon, setting up an expected vote in the House later today to avert a looming weekend shutdown.
The upper chamber voted 77-18 to pass further appropriations at current levels until March 1 for the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, the Food and Drug Administration and military construction
The 13-page bill also approved funding until March 8 for the Pentagon and all other federal agencies.
Eighteen Republicans voted against it, allowing it to easily clear the required 60-vote threshold for adoption.
“We have good news for America. There will not be a shutdown on Friday,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a floor speech. “Because both sides have worked together, the government will stay open, services will not be disrupted, we will avoid a needless disaster.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash), who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said a shutdown “should not be an acceptable option to anyone,” noting the additional “opportunities cost” for agencies having to prepare for the eventuality.
“I hope House Republicans will work with us,” she added, “which means leaving extreme partisan demands at the door.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who opposed the bill, introduced a last-minute motion to return it to the Appropriations Committee and instead prepare a full-year government funding measure until the end of the fiscal year, but it was voted down 82-13.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another “no” vote, also failed to pass an amendment to the legislation banning US funding to the West Bank and Gaza by a vote of 44-50.
The House had planned to vote on the measure on Friday, but with another snowstorm expected to blanket Washington, DC, the Republican-controlled lower chamber will likely pass it late Thursday with Democratic support, aides told The Post.
The measure will require a two-thirds vote in the narrowly divided lower chamber and is expected to have more Democratic “yes” votes than Republican ones, one aide said.
President Biden will then have to sign the legislation before the government’s lights go dark on Friday at midnight.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who acknowledged on Wednesday the funding would not give his caucus “everything we want” — introduced a “laddered” approach to the spending plan before the winter holiday recess, which was adopted again to extend the funding deadline.
He has expressed a desire to return the lower chamber to regular order and pass 12 separate appropriations bills for federal agencies and operations — a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since 1996.
Its passage would also allow Johnson to further negotiate a topline $1.66 trillion agreement with Schumer to fund the government for fiscal year 2024, with $888 billion in defense spending and $773 billion in discretionary spending.
Schumer called out hardline House Republicans last week for trying to “bully” their speaker and colleagues into a government shutdown.
Conservative lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus have opposed the continuing resolution as a “surrender” to what they describe as out-of-control federal spending under Democratic governance.
“The @HouseGOP is planning to pass a short-term spending bill continuing Pelosi levels with Biden policies, to buy time to pass longer-term spending bills at Pelosi levels with Biden policies,” the Freedom Caucus posted Sunday on X.
“We had 14 Democrats join all Republicans in voting yesterday to denounce and end Biden’s open border policies,” added Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who chairs the caucus, referring to a resolution passed Wednesday in the House.
“Now, it’s time to require border security to fund this government. Shut down the border or shut down the government!” he threatened.
The government has been funded on continuing resolutions since Oct. 1, when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) passed an earlier bill to avert a shutdown that eventually led to his ouster by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), seven other GOP lawmakers.
In November, Johnson passed two separate continuing resolutions to extend the funding deadline to Jan. 19 and Feb. 2. All the funding bills kept federal spending at fiscal year 2023 levels.
Senate Republicans and Democrats are further hashing out a separate $106 billion national security supplemental deal to send military aid to Ukraine and Israel and to reform US border laws.
Johnson met with Biden at the White House on Wednesday to express his concerns about the proposed border deal, along with Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
He emerged and told reporters afterward that he stressed the national security and humanitarian “catastrophe” occurring at the southern border, and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who joined the deliberations, later added that the president had agreed the US immigration system was “broken.”
The House speaker had rejected an earlier leaked draft of the bill that was posted by a conservative immigration group, prompting its chief Republican negotiator, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, to urge him and other lawmakers “not to believe everything you read on the internet.”