Ending the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays, Congress gave final approval to a temporary government spending bill that pushes a confrontation over the federal budget into the new year.
The Senate met into Wednesday night to pass the bill with an 87-11 tally and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature one day after it passed the House with massive Democratic Party support. It provides a spending into next year, when the House and Senate will be forced to confront — and somehow overcome — their considerable differences over what government spending levels should be.
In the meantime, the bill removes the threat of a government shutdown days before funding would have expired.
Despite their backing in the vote for the speakership, Johnson spurned MAGA Republicans and relied on Democrats to pass the spending bill.
The spending package keeps government funding at the current, unsustainable levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines where there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.
“Everybody is really kind of ready to vote and fight another day,” Republican Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said earlier Wednesday.
The two-step approach was not favored by many in the Senate, though all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it ensured the government would not shut down for now. Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, voted for the bill but said it would eventually “double the shutdown risk.”
The spending bill does not include the White House’s nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as funding for Palestinians and other spending demands. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who crafted the plan, has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending “fight” with the Senate next year.
The new speaker, who told reporters this week that he counted himself among the “arch-conservatives” of the House, is pushing for long-term spending cuts. He wanted to avoid lawmakers being forced to consider a massive government funding package before the December holidays — a tactic that incenses conservatives in particular.
But Johnson is also facing pushback from oconservatives who demand steep spending cuts to the spiraling U.S. government budget.
Many of those conservatives were among a group of 19 MAGA Republicans who defied Johnson Wednesday to prevent floor consideration of an appropriations bill to fund several government agencies.
GOP leaders called off the week’s work after the vote, sending lawmakers home early for Thanksgiving. It capped a period of intense bickering among lawmakers.
“This place is a pressure cooker,” Johnson said Tuesday, noting that the House had been in Washington for 10 weeks straight.
Republicans are demanding that Congress work out government funding through 12 separate bills, as the budgetary process requires, but House leadership has so far been forced to pull two of those bills from the floor, seen another rejected on a procedural vote and struggled to win support for others.
When it returns in two weeks, Congress is expected to focus on the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine and Israel funding. Republican senators have demanded that Congress pass immigration and border legislation alongside additional Ukraine aid, but a bipartisan Senate group working on a possible compromise has struggled to find consensus.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in a floor speech pledged that Republicans would continue to push for policy changes on the U.S. border with Mexico, saying it is “impossible to ignore the crisis at our southern border that’s erupted on Washington Democrats’ watch.”
One idea floating among Republicans is directly tying Ukraine funding levels with decreases in the number of illegal border crossings.
Schumer said the Senate would try to move forward on both the funding and border legislation in the coming weeks, but warned it would require a compromise and implored the House speaker, Johnson, to once again work with Democrats.
“I hope the new speaker continues to choose the bipartisan approach,” Schumer said.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article