The US Congress has released funds until next year, when the House of Representatives and Senate will have to deal with their significant differences over the level of funding.
The US Congress gave final approval on Wednesday evening to a temporary funding package that ended the threat of a government shutdown and postponed the fight over the federal budget until the new year.
The Senate met late into the night to pass the bill by an overwhelming 87-11 vote and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature, a day after it passed the House with broad bipartisan support.
The measure frees up funds until next year, when the House and Senate will be forced to grapple with (and somewhat overcome) their significant differences over funding levels.
“There will be no government shutdown this Friday evening,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech before the final vote.
The spending package ensures that government funding will remain at current levels for about two more months while a long-term package is negotiated.
It splits the deadlines for passing full-year budget bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines at risk of a partial government shutdown.
The Senate is working against time to prevent a shutdown of the US government
“Everyone is really ready to vote and fight another day,” Republican Leader John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said Wednesday.
The bill does not include the White House’s request for nearly $106 billion in war aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as humanitarian funding for the Palestinians and other complementary requests.
Lawmakers will likely pay more attention to that request after Thanksgiving in hopes of brokering a deal.
Schumer called the interim funding plan “far from perfect” but said he would support it because it avoids a shutdown and “will do so without the cruel cuts or poison pills” that hardline conservatives want.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who drafted the plan, has vowed he will not support other emergency funding measures, so-called continuing resolutions. He described the bill as the basis for a “battle” over spending with the Senate next year.
Johnson, who told reporters this week that he is among the “arch-conservatives” in the House, is pushing for deeper spending cuts but wanted to avoid forcing lawmakers to consider a major government funding package before the election. December holidays, a tactic that… angers conservatives in particular.
Also read: US House of Representatives approves plan to avoid partial government shutdown
But Johnson also faces resistance from other hardline Conservatives who wanted to use the prospect of a government shutdown to make deep cuts and political demands.
Many of those conservatives were among a group of 19 Republicans who called on Johnson on Wednesday to block consideration of a budget bill to fund several government agencies.
Republican leaders suspended work for a week after the vote and sent lawmakers home early for Thanksgiving, capping a period of intense bickering among lawmakers.
“This place is a pressure cooker,” Johnson said Tuesday, noting that the House has been in Washington for 10 weeks straight.
The inability of House Republicans to present a unified front is limiting the Louisiana congressman’s efforts to negotiate spending bills with the Senate.
Republicans are demanding that Congress regulate government funding through 12 separate bills as required by the budget process, but House leadership has so far been forced to withdraw two of those bills, another was defeated in a procedural vote and has struggled to garner support for others to win .
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When it returns in two weeks, Congress is expected to focus on the Biden administration’s Ukrainian and Israeli funding requests. Republican senators have called on Congress to pass immigration and border legislation as well as additional aid for Ukraine, but a bipartisan Senate group working on a possible deal has struggled to reach consensus.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell vowed in a speech that Republicans would continue to push for policy changes at the U.S. border with Mexico, saying it was “impossible to ignore the crisis at the southern border that is occurring under the supervision of the Washington Democrats has broken out.”
One idea circulating among Republicans is to directly link Ukraine’s funding levels to the decline in the number of illegal border crossings.
Most Senate Republicans support funding Ukraine, Sen. Kevin Cramer said, but added that “it’s secondary to securing our own border.”
But the United States is already cutting some of the war aid packages it is sending to Ukraine as funds are running low, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said from San Francisco, where he was accompanying President Joe Biden to a summit of world leaders Asia-Pacific region.
Kirby said the pool of money available to Ukraine “is being depleted, and that will have a detrimental impact on Ukraine’s ability to continue to defend itself.”
Schumer said the Senate would try to move forward on both funding and border legislation in the coming weeks, but warned that doing so would require compromises.
“Both sides have to give in,” he said.
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