Last-gasp drama moves US away from government shutdown
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pitched the stopgap measure, which will keep federal funding going for 45 days.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON - The US Congress passed an 11th-hour funding Bill on Saturday to keep federal agencies running for another 45 days and avert a costly United States government shutdown
Three hours before the midnight deadline, the Senate voted to keep the lights on through mid-November with a resolution that had advanced earlier from the House of Representatives in a day of high-stakes brinkmanship on Capitol Hill.
The last-ditch “continuing resolution” was pitched by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as millions of public workers looked set to be sent home unpaid, upending government functions from military operations to food aid to federal policymaking.
“Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hard-working Americans,” Mr Biden said in a statement.
But he berated Mr McCarthy and the House Republicans for reneging on spending levels agreed with the White House months ago – a major reason for the shutdown near-miss – and for stripping out support for Ukraine.
“I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment,” said the President, who signed the measure late on Saturday, according to the White House.
The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their own party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.
The group of 21 hardliners had threatened to remove Mr McCarthy as Speaker if a stopgap measure they opposed was passed with Democrats’ support, and many Washington watchers were expecting the Speaker to have to fight for his job in the coming weeks.
Time to negotiate
One of the hardliners, Ms Lauren Boebert, declined to say afterwards whether the group would try to force Mr McCarthy out, but she was clearly unhappy with the vote.
“There are too many members here who are comfortable doing things the way they’ve been done since the mid-1990s,” she told reporters. “And that’s why we’re sitting at US$33 trillion (S$45 trillion) in debt.”
Mr McCarthy sought to convey confidence, both about his own future and the prospects of securing a final agreement within the new 45-day deadline.
“In 45 days, we should get our work all done,” he said, while seeming to offer a hand to the hardliners, saying: “I welcome those 21 back in.”
‘No blank cheque’
Arming and funding Ukraine in its desperate war against the Russian invasion
One House Democrat, Mr Jared Moskowitz, told CNN: “This is enough to keep the government open, and I’m not going to shut the government down over foreign aid.”
Mr McCarthy said Russia’s invasion was “horrendous” but insisted there could be “no blank cheque” for Kyiv.
“I have a real concern of what’s going to happen long term, but I don’t want to waste any money,” he said.
With tensions running high and Democrats poring over the text of Mr McCarthy’s proposal, one of their lawmakers, Mr Jamaal Bowman, triggered a fire alarm in a building housing congressional offices an hour before Saturday’s vote.
Mr Bowman’s spokesman insisted it was an accident, but Republicans accused him of seeking to delay proceedings.
If Congress had failed to keep the government open, the closures would have begun just after midnight and would have delayed salaries for millions of federal employees and military personnel.
Among the immediate effects of a shutdown would have been the majority of national parks – from the iconic Yosemite and Yellowstone in the west to Florida’s Everglades swamp – shutting to the public from Sunday.
The stopgap measure buys legislators time to negotiate full-year spending Bills for the rest of fiscal 2024. AFP
