A bill to avert a US government shutdown has won passage from a divided US Senate after lawmakers cut deals on amendments, setting the stage for the president to sign it this week.
It also cleared the way for key debate on next year’s budget.
The so-called continuing resolution (CR) funds day-to-day government operations through the remainder of the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30. It easily passed 73-26 on Wednesday after Senate leaders agreed on the amendments.
Debate over next year’s budget began in earnest on the chamber’s floor minutes after the bill’s passage.
“This is a very good day for the Senate,” Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid told his colleagues. “Legislation is the art of compromise.”
Reid and his Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell, coordinated to break a logjam that threatened to delay the bill into next week’s congressional recess, jeopardizing the operations of government if US President Barack Obama does not sign the legislation by next Wednesday.
The continuing resolution now goes to the House of Representatives, where aides said it was expected to pass as early as yesterday.
The Republican-led House took the lead earlier this month with its original bill that largely kept in place the effects of billions of dollars in automatic budget cuts.
The Senate did not overturn the cuts, retaining the 5 percent budget pinch to domestic agencies and 8 percent slash to the Pentagon. It also kept the defense tweaks that the House included in its CR.
However, in a bid to soften the blow, it rearranged the spending allocations for a majority of government agencies, including the departments of justice, commerce and homeland security.
One adopted Senate amendment shifted about US$55 million to federal meat inspectors to ensure the continued operation of US food plants, which are required to shut down if there are no inspectors.
Another amendment aimed to keep air traffic control towers at rural airports financed under the budget cuts did not make it to the floor for a vote.
Senator John Cornyn, who voted for the CR along with 19 other fellow Republicans, acknowledged imperfections but said the measure “represents the first modest step toward reining in wasteful, Washington spending.”
However, Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican presidential prospect for 2016, criticized the measure for allowing Washington “to jump from one self-inflicted crisis to the next without actually solving any of our long-term job creation and debt challenges.”
“I refuse to support new measures that are simply a short-term, short-sighted Band-Aid disguised as a solution,” Rubio said.
The US government has been operating under CRs in recent years, with lawmakers in stalemate over the budget, but with the Democratic-held Senate introducing a budget plan for the first time in four years, a contentious fiscal debate has begun, with political rivals clashing over their spending vision for the next decade.
The House this week is expected to pass a budget resolution for next year put forward by Representative Paul Ryan, last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee, that slashes spending, reforms entitlements and insists on no new taxes.
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