WASHINGTON: The US Congress averted a Christmastime government shutdown early Saturday after weeks of tense talks that went down to the wire, passing a bill to fund federal agencies through mid-March.
With the midnight deadline already expired by minutes, lawmakers dropped normal procedure to fast-track the package to a vote, halting government shutdown preparations and saving Christmas for more than 800,000 workers at risk of being sent home without pay.
Democratic majority leader
“It’s good news that the bipartisan approach in the end prevailed… It’s a good outcome for America and the American people,” Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The Democrats run the Senate, so there was never much doubt that the funding package would get a rubber stamp after the party was crucial in helping the Republican majority in the House pass the bill earlier in the day.
But with senators often dragging their feet over complex legislation, there were fears that the funding fight might spill into next week.
That would have meant non-essential operations winding up, with up to 875,000 workers furloughed and as many as 1.4 million more required to work without pay.
Government budgets
Congress’s setting of government budgets is always a fraught task, with both chambers closely divided between Republicans and Democrats.
Two subsequent efforts to find compromise fell short, leaving Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson at the last chance saloon as he spent much of Friday huddling with aides to find a way to keep government agencies running.
READ ALSO: UN Calls for Sovereignty in Occupied Golan Heights
If the funding bill had failed, non-essential government functions would have been put on ice. Employees in key services like law enforcement would have continued working but would only have been paid once government functions were back up.
Many parks, monuments and national sites would have closed at a time when millions of visitors are expected.
Let it begin
Lawmakers avoided all that holiday-season pain by funding the government until March 14 in a package that includes $110 billion in disaster aid and financial relief for farmers.
It is essentially the same as a bill that failed miserably in a vote Thursday — except without a two-year suspension of the country’s self-imposed borrowing limit demanded by Trump.
But Johnson put a positive sheen on events, telling reporters after the House passed the funding package that January, when Trump returns to office, would mark a “sea change” in Washington.
“President Trump will return to DC and to the White House, and we will have Republican control of the Senate and the House,” Johnson told reporters. “Things are going to be very different around here.”
