Government
Senate Passes Spending Bill, Averting Government Shutdown
U.S. Senators voted mostly along party lines to pass the continuing resolution funding the government through Sept. 30, the end of it fiscal year.
Photo via U.S. Senate
The U.S. Senate voted mostly along party lines 54-46 late March 14 to pass a spending bill known as a continuing resolution, which will fund the federal government for the rest of its fiscal year ending Sept. 30. The bill includes about $7 billion in spending cuts, including to some programs that fund government construction projects.
The vote came just hours before the midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown after lawmakers last passed a stopgap spending measure in December. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill sets total base discretionary spending at $1.6 trillion. It cuts nondefense spending by about $13 billion—including $1.4 billion from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works and $2 billion from transportation safety projects. But not surprisingly, the measure also increases defense spending by about $6 billion.
“For the most part, this is a straightforward [continuing resolution] that simply continues fiscal year 2024 funding levels,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The GOP, with a 53-seat majority in the Senate and only Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) saying he would vote against the spending bill, needed the support of at least eight Democrats to advance the bill to a final vote ahead of the midnight deadline.
Nine Democrats, plus Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) joined them in voting to advance the measure.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the bill “very bad,” but said he voted to advance it because the consequences of a shutdown would be worse.
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“A shutdown would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” Schumer said the day before the vote. “Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel ‘non-essential,’ furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.”
The vote came days after the House passed the continuing resolution with support from just one House Democrat. In the Senate, Democrats appeared split ahead of the vote. Lawmakers did not vote on a competing stopgap bill introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which would have given lawmakers another month to negotiate terms of a spending bill to run through the rest of the fiscal year.
Murray criticized the House Republicans’ bill for not including earmarks, the congressional directives normally included in spending bills, and instead leaving more control over spending to Trump’s executive branch, rather than Congress, at a time when he and his unelected advisor Elon Musk have already moved to halt spending mandated by Congress and fire tens of thousands of government employees.
“Instead of writing a bill that gives our communities what they need, they wrote a bill that turns many of our accounts into slush funds, and gives the final say over what gets funding to two billionaires who don’t know the first thing about the needs of our working families,” Murray said.
