The Senate on Thursday evening passed a bill to fund the government through March 11, advancing another short-term measure amid ongoing talks about a larger spending package and averting a shutdown before funding expires midnight on Friday.
After several days of GOP holdups, the continuing resolution – which funds the government at existing levels for another month – cleared the upper chamber in a bipartisan vote. Earlier on Tuesday, the Senate advanced the measure in a key procedural vote, with 18 Republicans joining all present Democratic senators to help surpass the 60-vote threshold. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk for him to sign it into law.
Leaders in both parties projected confidence this week that they’d be able to avoid a government shutdown before the Friday deadline. The House passed the continuing resolution in a bipartisan vote last week, but delays in the Senate plus some absences from Democrats complicated the process and pushed the vote much closer to the deadline than anticipated.
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But by Thursday, the Senate overcame Republican objections with an agreement on amendment votes. And on Tuesday, GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee lifted her hold on the bill after getting assurances from the White House that federal money won’t fund drug pipes as a part of the administration’s harm-reduction program.
While they still had one more day to pass the short-term funding bill, senators wanted a quick action on final passage with recess approaching and some senators imminently leaving to attend a security conference in Munich. They ultimately voted on three amendments offered by Republicans – two that targeted vaccine mandates related to schools and federal workers and one on a balanced budget – but all of them failed.
In the absence of a larger appropriations package known as an omnibus, this is the third time since September that Congress passed a short-term funding measure to keep the government open and avoid a shutdown.
Negotiators recently reached a bipartisan agreement on a framework but have yet to release the top-line numbers. They now have a little less than a month to hammer out the legislative details to try to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year that ends in the fall.
