Congress approves temporary funding and pushes the fight over the federal budget into the new year

WASHINGTON — Congress ended the threat of a government shutdown until after the holidays, giving final approval to a temporary government funding package that pushes a showdown over the federal budget into the new year.

The Senate convened Wednesday evening to approve the bill by a vote of 87-11, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature a day after it passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming majority. It provides a funding spot for next year, when the House of Representatives and the Senate will be forced to confront — and somehow overcome — their significant differences over the level of funding.

In the meantime, the bill removes the threat of a government shutdown days before funding would have expired.

“There will be no government shutdown this year,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference after the bill passed.

The spending package will keep government funding at current levels for about two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for approving full-year budgets into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines that risk a partial government shutdown.

“Everyone is really 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, although all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it would keep the government from shutting down for a while. Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, voted for the bill but said it would ultimately “double the shutdown risk.”

The spending bill also does not include the White House’s request for nearly $106 billion for wartime aid to Israel and Ukraine, nor for humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other additional requests. Lawmakers will likely turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of reaching an agreement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who drafted the plan, has pledged he will not support further emergency funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as the basis for a “spending battle” with the Senate next year.

The new chairman, who told reporters this week that he counted himself among the House of Representatives’ “arch-conservatives,” is pushing for deeper cuts. He wanted to avoid forcing lawmakers to consider a major government funding package before the December holidays — a tactic that particularly infuriates conservatives.

But Johnson also faces pushback from other hardline conservatives who wanted to use the prospect of a government shutdown to push for sharp cuts and policy demands.

Many of those conservatives were among a group of 19 Republicans who defied Johnson Wednesday to prevent a bill to fund various government agencies from being passed.

Republican leaders halted work for the week after the vote and sent 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 of Representatives had been in Washington for 10 straight weeks.

The Republican Party’s inability to present a united front on funding legislation could undermine the Louisiana congressman’s ability to negotiate spending bills with the Senate.

Republicans are demanding that Congress handle government funding through 12 separate bills, as the budget process requires, but House leadership has so far been forced to pull two of those bills from the floor, saw another rejected in a procedural vote and had difficulty winning support. for others.

When Congress returns in two weeks, it is expected to focus on the Biden administration’s requests for funding for Ukraine and Israel. Republican senators have demanded that Congress pass immigration and border legislation along with additional aid to Ukraine, but a bipartisan Senate group working on a possible compromise has struggled to find 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. He said it is “impossible to ignore the crisis at our southern border that has erupted under the watch of Washington Democrats.”

One idea among Republicans is to directly tie funding levels to Ukraine to a decrease in illegal border crossings. It showed how even longtime supporters of Ukraine’s defense against Russia are willing to hold up funding to force Congress to address an issue that has confounded generations of lawmakers: U.S. border policy.

Most Senate Republicans support funding Ukraine, said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., but he added, “It’s secondary to securing our own border.”

But the U.S. is already scaling back some of the wartime aid packages it is sending to Ukraine as funds run out, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said from San Francisco, where he was joining President Joe Biden for a summit of leaders in Asia and the Pacific.

He said the pot of money available to Ukraine “is dwindling away, and will therefore have a detrimental effect on Ukraine’s ability to continue to defend itself.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said in a statement that he voted against Wednesday’s funding package because it did not include aid to Ukraine.

Schumer said the Senate would try to make progress on both funding and border legislation in the coming weeks, but warned that would require compromise and implored House Speaker Johnson to reengage with Democrats to work together.

“I hope the new speaker continues to take the bipartisan approach,” Schumer said.

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.