The Senate passed a $1.2 trillion spending package of bills in the early morning hours of Saturday, a long-awaited measure nearly six months into a budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown into the fall. The bill now goes to President Biden to be signed into law.
The vote was 74 to 24. This came after funding for some government agencies expired at midnight, but the White House sent a notice shortly after the deadline announcing that the Office of Management and Budget had halted preparations for the shutdown because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress will approve the legislation and Biden will sign it on Saturday.
“Because obligations for federal funds are incurred and tracked daily, agencies will not close and may continue normal operations,” the White House statement said.
The possibility of a short-term government shutdown appeared to increase Friday evening after Republicans said Democrats had rejected their requests to vote on several amendments on border security and other issues. Any successful amendments to the bill would send the legislation back to the House of Representatives, which has already left town on recess for two weeks.
But shortly before midnight, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, about a breakthrough.
“It's been a very long and difficult day, but we just reached an agreement to complete the job of funding the government,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “It's good for the country that we reached this bipartisan agreement. “It wasn't easy, but our determination tonight was worth it.”
While Congress has already approved money for Veterans Affairs, Interior, Agriculture and other agencies, the bill approved this week was much larger, providing funding for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State and other aspects of government.
The House of Representatives approved the package of spending bills on Friday morning, by a majority of 286 votes to 134, narrowly obtaining the two-thirds majority needed for quick approval. More than 70% of the money will go to defense.
The vote in the House of Representatives reflects anger among Republicans over the content of the package and the speed with which it was voted on. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) introduced the measure even though a majority of Republicans ended up voting against it. He then said the bill “represents the best outcome that can be achieved in a divided government.”
In a sign of intransigence on the party's right side, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) launched an effort to remove Johnson as Speaker of the House when the House began voting, but he held off on taking further action until lawmakers returned in two weeks. . It's the same tool that was used last year to remove the last Republican president, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
The breakdown of votes showed that 101 Republicans voted for the bill and 112 voted against it. Meanwhile, 185 Democrats voted in favor of the bill and 22 against.
Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee who helped craft the package, stepped down from that role after the vote. She will remain on the committee to provide advice and leadership as a mentor to colleagues when needed.
Johnson split this fiscal year's spending bills in two, as House Republicans revolted against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for a huge, complex so-called omnibus bill, they say, with little time to review it or face a shutdown. . Johnson viewed this as a breakthrough, saying the two-part operation was “an important step in breaking down overall muscle memory.”
However, the package was clearly unpopular among most Republicans, who viewed it as containing too few of their policy priorities and spending too much.
“The bottom line is this is complete and utter surrender,” said Rep. Eric Burleson (R-Mo.).
It took lawmakers six months of the current fiscal year to get closer to the finish line on government funding, a process that has been slowed by conservatives who have pushed for more policy mandates and deeper spending cuts than the Democratic-led Senate or White House could contemplate. The impasse required several temporary, short-term spending bills to keep agencies funded.
Congress approved the first package of full-year spending bills two weeks ago with hours remaining before funding for Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Interior and other departments expires.
When the two packages are combined, estimated spending for the budget year will reach about $1.66 trillion. This does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare or financing the country's growing debt.
To win Republican support, Johnson touted some spending increases that had secured about 8,000 additional detention beds for immigrants awaiting immigration proceedings or being removed from the country. This represents an increase of 24% from current levels. GOP leadership also highlighted more money to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.
Meanwhile, Democrats are touting a $1 billion increase for Head Start programs and new child care centers for military families. They also highlighted a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100 million increase for Alzheimer's disease research.
“Make no mistake, we have had to work under very difficult higher numbers and resist literally hundreds of extreme Republican poison pills from the House, not to mention some unimaginable cuts,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Democratic leader of the House. Senate Appropriations Committee. “But at the end of the day, this is a bill that will keep our country and our families moving forward.”
Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on that committee, implored her GOP colleagues that spending on non-defense programs in the bill was actually declining even before accounting for inflation. She described the package as “conservative” and “carefully crafted.”
“These bills are not large spending bills that are largely out of scope,” Collins said.
Spending in the bill largely tracks the agreement then-House Speaker McCarthy reached with the White House in May 2023, which restricted spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling until January 2025 so the federal government could continue paying its bills.
Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers that last year's agreement, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, would save the federal government about $1 trillion over the next decade.
Freking and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
