WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives has approved bipartisan federal spending bill on Friday and sent it to the Senate, just hours before a midnight deadline to fund the government. It was unclear Friday whether the Senate could pass the bill before 12:00 a.m. ET, when the funding technical errors.
The bill continues to fund the federal government at current levels for three months and provides disaster relief and farm assistance.
The bill passed with significant Democratic support and a two-thirds vote of members present, a high bar that reflected the desire of both parties to avoid a costly shutdown that could threaten the paychecks of hundreds of thousands of federal employees just days before Christmas.
The bill has a realistic path to passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But parliamentary procedure in the chamber gives more power to individual senators to block legislation.
If the bill passes the Senate in its current form, outgoing President Joe Biden is expected to quickly sign it into law.
“While it does not include everything we sought … President Biden supports moving this legislation forward,” White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said in a statement Friday.
The House vote ended several days of chaos on Capitol Hill during which Johnson tried and failed to respond to President-elect Donald Trump’s demands.
Trump and his billionaire campaign donor Elon MuskTesla’s chief executive doomed an initial, negotiated financing plan to failure on Wednesday, sharply criticizing its provisions, leaving Republicans scrambling for much of Thursday to find replacement plan.
Specifically, Trump has insisted that any deal to keep the government open must include a two-year freeze on the U.S. debt limit. The cap is the maximum the federal government can borrow to pay its expenses.
The debt ceiling is a recurring, heated debate in Washington every few years, and one where the minority political party usually has a lot of influence. Trump seems eager to avoid that fight early in his second term.
But allowing the US to borrow more money is a bridge too far for many hardline conservative Republicans.
That much was evident on Thursday billwhich contained clean government funding and raising the debt limit was soundly defeated. Nearly every Democrat was joined by 38 rank-and-file Republicans who voted against it, after theirs the party leader publicly endorsed the deal.
Like Thursday’s failed vote, Friday’s passage — without Trump’s debt limit hike — served as a reminder to the president-elect of how difficult it is to control the notoriously divisive House Republican caucus.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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