US Senate Passes Bill to Avert Government Shutdown, Sent to President Biden
Image Source: Times of India
A bill to prevent a government shutdown has been adopted by the US Senate and will now be forwarded to President Joe Biden’s desk for enactment.
With little under 36 hours to go before funding would have started to run out, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives endorsed a short-term stopgap spending package, which the Democratic-majority US Senate passed on Thursday to prevent a partial government shutdown.
After passing the Senate on a divided vote of 77–13, the bill will now head to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law. It will establish timelines for funding the government by March 8 for one half and March 22 for the other.
In the House earlier on Thursday, 207 Democrats and 113 Republicans voted in favor of the short-term temporary bill, 320–99, buying Congress additional time to reach a decision on funding for the entire fiscal year that started on October 1.
It has been around two months since Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson reached an agreement on a level of discretionary spending for the fiscal year that comes to $1.59 trillion.
Johnson, who has only held the speakership since late October, once more depended on a procedural maneuver that would have angered hardline conservatives by requiring Democrats to give the majority of the votes in order to approve the stopgap spending package.
This, along with 97 “no” votes from his 219-member Republican conference, may pose a challenge for the speaker when he considers six full-year spending measures the next week and then turns his attention to the contentious matter of aid to Ukraine.
Three House Republicans, including Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, forecasted that Johnson will prioritize aid to Israel, Ukraine, and US allies in the Indo-Pacific region following the completion of six more funding measures by March 22. The $95 billion national security bill was approved by the Senate earlier this month in a bipartisan vote.
“I am a perpetual optimist. I believe we’ll succeed in passing it,” McCaul stated, adding that the bill would substitute a credit program for direct help and provide authorities the authority to confiscate and sell Russian sovereign assets as an offset.
“To put our national security first and move with urgency to get this bipartisan bill to my desk,” was Biden’s appeal to House Republicans.
Additionally, Republican Representatives Don Bacon and Brian Fitzpatrick have put forth aid legislation for US friends that would exclude humanitarian help and reinstate the return-to-Mexico border policy.
Congress may still clash in the coming weeks over funding levels for numerous programs that conservatives want to cut back on, even with the temporary funding package that was passed on Thursday.
Hardline Republicans had put pressure on Johnson to use the closure as a negotiating tool to compel Democrats to acquiesce to conservative policy proposals, such as partisan clauses that would limit the number of migrants who may cross the border between the United States and Mexico.
This group of Republicans, according to Representative Chip Roy, is now trying to get Johnson to introduce a new budget measure that would fund the government through September 30 but reduce non-defense expenditure while maintaining levels for defense and veteran benefits.
“We think we’re capable of doing that. That actually offers a good alternative, in our opinion,” Roy informed reporters.
Republican Representative Patrick McHenry anticipated that, in contrast to his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, who was forced out of leadership after a tiny group of hardliners voted against a bipartisan deal to prevent a shutdown in September, Johnson would not be threatened by votes on spending bills.
“This is the House Republicans coming to terms with reality,” McHenry stated. “This is the end result that has been evident for months. The best course of action is to move forward.”
Major rating agencies claim that a country whose debt has topped $34 trillion is becoming less creditworthy as a result of the persistent brinkmanship.
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