Government shutdown averted after Senate passes House funding bill

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed a government funding bill on Saturday that averted a government shutdown and marked the end of a chaotic, high-stakes week in Congress.

The White House said in a statement that the bill had been signed. Biden has not made any public statements following the 11th-hour congressional negotiations that led to the U.S. Senate approving the bipartisan federal spending bill.

“While it does not include everything we sought … President Biden supports moving this legislation forward,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Friday.

The bill authorizes continued funding of the federal government at current levels for three months and provides additional disaster relief and farm aid.

The House overwhelmingly approved the measure on Friday evening by a vote of 366 to 34, with support from every Democrat and more than three-quarters of Republicans.

In the Senate, the bill passed by 85 votes to 11 shortly after midnight. Of the no votes, Republicans cast 10 and one came from Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

The resounding support for the stopgap funding bill reflected a desire in both parties to avoid a costly shutdown that could have jeopardized paychecks for hundreds of thousands of federal employees a few days before Christmas.

The dramatic votes in both the House and Senate capped off several days of chaos on Capitol Hill, during which House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried and failed to meet the demands of President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump and his billionaire campaign donor Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, doomed an initial, negotiated funding plan Wednesday by harshly criticizing its provisions, sending Republicans scrambling most of Thursday to find a replacement.

Specifically, Trump insisted that any deal to keep the government open must include a two-year suspension of the U.S. debt limit. The limit is the maximum the federal government can borrow to pay for its spending.

The debt ceiling is a recurring, bitter debate in Washington every few years and one where the political party in the minority typically has a lot of leverage. Trump appears eager to avoid this fight during the start of his second term in office.

But authorizing the U.S. to borrow more money is a bridge too far for many hardline conservative Republicans.

This was evident when Thursday’s bill, which contained bare-bones government funding and a debt limit hike, was resoundingly defeated. Joining nearly every Democrat were 38 rank-and-file Republicans who voted against it, after their party’s leader had publicly endorsed the deal.

Like Thursday’s failed vote, Friday’s passage — without Trump’s debt limit hike — served as a reminder to the incoming president of just how difficult it is to control the notoriously fractious House Republican caucus.