The US Congress and US President Barack Obama steered the US government clear of a shutdown on Wednesday just hours before a midnight deadline, approving temporary federal spending that does not defund a women’s healthcare provider as Republicans hoped.
The US Senate and House of Representatives acted pragmatically to fund the government at current levels beyond yesterday’s start of the new fiscal year, and Obama signed the measure into law late on Wednesday.
The stopgap only runs through Dec. 11, setting up a new potential fiscal clash just 10 weeks from now.
Photo: Reuters
However, it avoids a repeat of 2013, when lawmakers divided over spending allowed the government to skid into a damaging 16-day shutdown.
Obama hailed the congressional action.
“It looks like the Republicans will just barely avoid shutting down the government for the second time in two years,” he told state Democrats at the White House.
Republican US Representative Charlie Dent said it would be “utterly reckless” to trigger a spending crisis over Planned Parenthood.
“Whether you like them or not isn’t the point,” he said. “We should never shut the government down over that or frankly any other issue at this time.”
The spending includes funding for the women’s healthcare and abortion provider long targeted by Republicans.
Debate exploded earlier this year, when abortion foes released secretly recorded videos that they said show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the for-profit sale of fetal tissue obtained during abortion procedures, which would violate federal law.
Planned Parenthood said the videos were deceitfully edited, and that its staff was merely discussing the process for obtaining tissue and the legal payments by researchers to cover expenses including transportation.
Appalled arch-conservatives called for a ban on federal funding for the organization, and sought to use negotiations over spending as leverage to achieve their goal.
Efforts to pass a spending measure that blocked money to Planned Parenthood failed last week. Wednesday’s clean bill passed 78 votes to 20 in the Senate, with more than half the chamber’s Republicans voting in favor. No Democrats voted against it.
US Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican presidential hopeful who has led the fight to defund Planned Parenthood at virtually all costs, slammed his party’s capitulation.
“Republican leadership chose to abandon its constitutional power of the purse and to fund 100 percent of President Obama’s failed agenda,” Cruz said. “This was a mistake, and it’s why people are so frustrated with Washington.”
The measure later cleared the House with bipartisan support, 277 to 151.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the large number of Republicans voting “no” laid bare the “astounding, toxic radicalism of the Republican majority” as it obsessed over women’s health.
“In the coming weeks, Congress must come together to avert further crisis and negotiate a budget that will responsibly end the sequester and meet the needs of the American people,” she said.
While their defunding strategy failed, hardcore conservatives achieved what many in their camp consider a crucial victory: the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner, who has been dogged for years by a far-right flank that demands more aggressively conservative action.
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