Senate sends spending deal to Biden's desk, averting shutdown

The Senate in the early hours of Saturday passed a stopgap funding package, avoiding a government shutdown that would have furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers and bringing a tumultuous week in Congress to a close.

Senators voted 85-11 to approve a continuing resolution (CR) that extends funding at current levels until March 14, provides more than $100 billion in disaster assistance to areas ravaged by hurricanes and other storms and includes economic assistance for farmers.

The bill, which passed the House 366-34-1 earlier Friday, will now head to President Biden’s desk for his signature ahead of a midnight deadline.

"Tonight, the Senate delivers more good news for America. There will be no government shutdown right before Christmas," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor ahead of final passage. "This is a good bill. It'll keep the government open ... and helps Americans affected by hurricanes and natural disasters, helps our farmers and avoid harmful cuts."

"After a chaotic few days in the House, it's good news that the bipartisan approach in the end prevailed. It's a good lesson for next year. Both sides have to work together," he added. 

The final bill came together quickly after days of uncertainty, during which many lawmakers feared they were careening toward an inevitable shutdown. 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was forced to cycle through a number of proposals. A bipartisan, bicameral, 1,547-page deal rolled out on Tuesday collapsed when President-elect Trump announced he wouldn't support it and demanded any funding plan include a suspension of the debt ceiling.

House Republicans spent the remainder of the week scrambling for something that could get the approval of most of their conference, Democrats and Trump.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) fired an early shot at Johnson by announcing that he would not vote for him to serve another two years as Speaker.

The Senate did not play an active role in negotiations after House conservatives and rank-and-file Republicans torpedoed the initial deal, which took weeks to hammer out. 

Lawmakers breathed a sigh of relief after it finally passed. But the close brush with a crippling shutdown left some Republicans wondering what chaos might be in store next year, when Republicans will control an even smaller House majority, and Trump is in office.

“It definitely would,” said Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top GOP appropriator, said when asked how helpful it would be for Trump to make his demands earlier in the process. “I assume that is what will happen once he is inaugurated, there is a Cabinet and a legislative office.”

The final bill did not include anything related to the debt limit, though House Republicans agreed to increase the borrowing limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net cuts to mandatory spending. That would take place during next year’s budget reconciliation process. 

Schumer, along with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), held the line after Trump waded into talks with his debt ceiling demand by publicly calling for Johnson to honor the bipartisan bill that they had all negotiated. 

All told, the three-month stopgap bill included roughly $100 billion in aid for areas ravaged by natural disasters, including hurricanes Helene and Milton. Senators from North and South Carolina had threatened to hold up any bill that did not include the funds. 

Included in the disaster aid is nearly $29 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund, which had seen its coffers become nearly empty recently. 

The CR also OK’d federal funds to help rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in March. 

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loans program, which businesses and homeowners rely on for low-interest loans to recover from disasters, also was replenished to the tune of about $2 billion.

The bill includes a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill after Congress failed again in passing a new, five-year version. Lawmakers also agreed to spend an additional $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, which comes after some Republicans in both chambers threatened not to vote for the measure without the further assistance.

At the same time, the roughly 120-page bill was significantly slimmed down from an initial bipartisan agreement struck earlier this week, which Trump ally Elon Musk also helped kill.

Among the notable provisions that were ultimately stripped from the final bill were a transfer of land surrounding Robert F. Kennedy Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia and language that would have ended a years-long freeze on cost-of-living adjustments for members. 

Some Republicans have also acknowledged the loss of other major bipartisan components of the earlier agreement, particularly in healthcare, including proposed pharmaceutical benefit manager (PBM) industry reforms.

“It was mislabeled by so many people, like the pay raise, the J6 committee. It was false stuff out there, and we had good wins in there,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a moderate, said Thursday. He also noted PBM proposals and said a previous pitch for year-round E 15 ethanol sales would have been “huge.”

He also took a shot at Musk for elevating misinformation about the package on social media, including claims that the bill “included a provision to facilitate a $3 billion NFL stadium in Washington, D.C.” 

“We should be candid, though, that a lot of stuff he said wasn't true. I don't know if he intentionally did it. He may have been just repeating what he was told,” Bacon said. But he added, “a lot of stuff wasn't true, and he was fixated on the 1500 pages, but the reality is, worry about the substance, not the length of the thing. And 600 pages – that was PBM.”