Senate passes $1.2-trillion funding package in overnight vote, ending threat of partial shutdown

WASHINGTON —  The Senate passed a $1.2-trillion package of spending bills in the early morning hours Saturday, a long overdue action nearly six months into the budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall. The bill now goes to President Biden to be signed into law.

The vote was 74 to 24. It came after funding had expired for some government agencies at midnight, but the White House sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress would pass the legislation and Biden would sign it Saturday.

“Because obligations of federal funds are incurred and tracked on a daily basis, agencies will not shut down and may continue their normal operations,” the White House statement said.

Prospects for a short-term government shutdown had appeared to grow Friday evening after Republicans said Democrats had rejected their requests for votes on several amendments on border security and other issues. Any successful amendments to the bill would send the legislation back to the House, which has already left town for a two-week recess.

But shortly before midnight, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer announced a breakthrough.

“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we have just reached an agreement to complete the job of funding the government,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal. It wasn’t easy, but tonight our persistence has been worth it.”

While Congress had already approved money for Veterans Affairs, Interior, Agriculture and other agencies, the bill approved this week was much larger, providing funding for the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments and other aspects of government.

The House had approved the package of spending bills Friday morning, by a vote of 286 to 134, narrowly gaining the two-thirds majority needed for fast-track approval. More than 70% of the money would go to Defense.

The vote in the House reflected anger among Republicans over the content of the package and the speed with which it was brought to a vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) brought the measure to the floor even though a majority of Republicans ended up voting against it. He said afterward that the bill “represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government.”

In a sign of intransigence on the party’s right flank, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) initiated an effort to oust Johnson from the speakership as the House began the vote but held off on further action until the lawmakers return in two weeks. It’s the same tool that was used last year to remove the last Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.

The vote breakdown showed 101 Republicans voting for the bill and 112 voting against it. Meanwhile, 185 Democrats voted for the bill and 22 against.

Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, which helped draft the package, stepped down from that role after the vote. She said she would stay on the committee to provide advice and lead as a teacher for colleagues when needed.

Johnson broke up this fiscal year’s spending bills into two parts as House Republicans revolted against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for one massive, complex bill called an omnibus; this, they say, leaves them little time to review it or face a shutdown. Johnson viewed that as a breakthrough, saying the two-part process was “an important step in breaking the omnibus muscle memory.”

Still, the package was clearly unpopular with most Republicans, who viewed it as containing too few of their policy priorities and as spending too much.

“The bottom line is that this is a complete and utter surrender,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.).

It took lawmakers six months into the current fiscal year to get near the finish line on government funding, the process slowed by conservatives who pushed for more policy mandates and steeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider. The impasse required several short-term, stopgap spending bills to keep agencies funded.

The first package of full-year spending bills cleared Congress two weeks ago with hours to spare before funding expired for Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Interior and other departments.

When combining the two packages, discretionary spending for the budget year will come to about $1.66 trillion. That does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare or financing the country’s rising debt.

To win over support from Republicans, Johnson touted some of the spending increases secured for about 8,000 more detention beds for migrants awaiting their immigration proceedings or removal from the country. That’s about a 24% increase from current levels. Also, GOP leadership highlighted more money to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are boasting of a $1-billion increase for Head Start programs and new child-care centers for military families. They also played up a $120-million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100-million increase for Alzheimer’s research.

“Make no mistake, we had to work under very difficult top-line numbers and fight off literally hundreds of extreme Republican poison pills from the House, not to mention some unthinkable cuts,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “But at the end of the day this is a bill that will keep our country and our families moving forward.”

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on that committee, appealed to her GOP colleagues by stating that the bill’s spending on nondefense programs actually decreases even before accounting for inflation. She called the package “conservative” and “carefully drafted.”

“These bills are not big spending bills that are wildly out of scope,” Collins said.

The spending in the bill largely tracks with an agreement that then-Speaker McCarthy worked out with the White House in May 2023, which restricted spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling into January 2025 so the federal government could continue paying its bills.

Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers that last year’s agreement, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, will save the federal government about $1 trillion over the coming decade.

Freking and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.