#Socialites, we’ve got a little bit of a breather as Congress has just passed a 45-day stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown. The House and Senate both agreed to terms just hours before the midnight deadline when funding for federal agencies was set to run out. Now, the bill will need to be signed into law by President Joe Biden.
As we previously reported last week, just as the national debt hit an all-time high of $33 trillion, we learned the government was also on the verge of facing a potential shutdown over federal funding. It had been less than two weeks before the federal government neared a shutdown over a lack of funding authorization.
We shared that with the new U.S. national debt milestone, it became a huge issue at the center of a standstill in Congress. The House and Senate had been discussing a spending bill that would sustain the government until the next funding cycle comes around.
We noted that if Congress didn’t agree on terms and pass a bill to fund the government by Saturday (September 30, 2023), then the nation would experience its latest government shutdown. The last time the United States faced one was in 2019.
Less than two weeks ago, we shared that Republican lawmakers were pushing for less spending as the Democrats supported President Biden’s programs, like the Inflation Reduction Act, which is estimated to cost more than $1 trillion over the next decade, per a budget model produced by the University of Pennsylvania.
Per NBC News, the House Republicans had also released their own bill on Sunday (September 17) to fund the government until October 31, in exchange for an 8 percent cut to domestic programs, minus those for national security. However, it was reported that the bill might not pass the Democrat-controlled Senate.
But now, just hours ahead of the midnight deadline to agree on terms to fund the federal government, Congress has passed a 45-day measure to keep the government open and spare the country from experiencing its latest government shutdown.
At the very last minute, three hours before the 12:01 a.m. deadline to be exact, the Senate voted to pass a 71-page short-term bill, drafted by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. The bill, which will keep the government open through November 17, includes natural disaster aid, but with stipulations for the U.S. and overseas allies.
The spending bill allocates disaster relief funds but does not include new financial assistance for Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia or border security. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, the U.S. has dished out more than $43 billion in security assistance.
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On Saturday morning, House Speaker McCarthy announced the stopgap proposal, and his colleagues passed the bill with an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote (335 to 91). They’re expected to resume work on Monday (October 2).
Hours later, the Senate, which was working to advance its own bipartisan stopgap bill and was ready to take a procedural vote on Saturday afternoon, put its own bill on pause after seeing how quickly the House moved to pass the short-term funding extension.
Speaking out after Congress passed the measure, President Biden said, “This is good news for the American people. But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place. Just a few months ago, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis. For weeks, extreme House Republicans tried to walk away from that deal by demanding drastic cuts that would have been devastating for millions of Americans. They failed.”
For those unknowing, a government shutdown can negatively impact many government operations (bringing them to a halt), suspend air travel, and even affect clean drinking water, etc. However, other essential services required to maintain public safety would continue.
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