WITH only hours to spare before the end of the fiscal year, Congress approved a temporary funding measure aimed to keep the government open past the midnight deadline on Wednesday, Sept. 29. The bill was later signed by President Barack Obama.
The stopgap bill will extend funding for federal agencies.
The 78-20 Senate vote showed confidence in an approach engineered by top GOP leaders who are determined to avoid a government shutdown, the Associated Press reported.
That approach, favored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), and soon-to-retire House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), has angered tea party lawmakers wanting to use the must-pass measure against Planned Parenthood for its scandalous practices involving the supply of tissue from aborted fetuses for scientific research.
In a tougher vote, the House later approved the measure Wednesday afternoon, with frustrated GOP leaders counting on Democratic votes to balance opposition from tea party supporters of “defunding” Planned Parenthood.
Hours before the midnight deadline, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation to fund government offices and services through to December, without any of the cuts to Planned Parenthood, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In the 277-151 vote, a large majority of Republicans went against the measure, which did not meet demands to defund Planned Parenthood.
While Boehner’s resignation announcement last week eased the way for Democrat support for the spending bill, it still does nothing to resolve core disputes between the Republicans and the Obama administration.
The New York Times reported that House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, who is front-runner-up for the next House Speaker, and other Republican leaders were expected to cast votes against the measure, citing their longstanding complains that it would not cut off federal financing to Planned Parenthood or take action to undermine administration policies they oppose, such as Obamacare.
The spending bill would prevent a repeat of the partial federal shutdown of two years ago, and finance the government through Dec. 11. It also provides 10 weeks of time to negotiate a more wide-ranging budget deal for the rest of fiscal 2016, which ends on Sept. 30, 2016.
The bill also includes $700 million in funding, to help combat wildfires in the West.
Senate Majority Leader McConnell said Tuesday, Sept. 30 that he and Boehner spoke with Obama recently and that he expected budget talks to get underway soon.
Federal efforts to increase the operating budgets for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies still operating under automatic curbs that would effectively freeze their spending are the main issue. Republicans are leading the drive to boost defense, while Obama is demanding equal relief for domestic programs.
“The good news is that it looks like the Republicans will just barely avoid shutting down the government for the second time in two years,” said Obama on Wednesday, with a tinge of sarcasm. “That’s a somewhat low bar but we should celebrate where we can.”
“The bad news is that it looks like Republicans will just barely avoid shutting down the government again for the second time in two years,” he added, according to Reuters.
The conversation among McConnell, Boehner and Obama took place earlier this month, before Boehner announced his stepping down. Many conservative GOP lawmakers who helped bring Boehner down want to preserve stringent “caps” on the spending bills Congress passes every year, AP said. However, Senate Republicans are generally more eager to rework the 2011 budget deal that put them in place.
Boehner’s surprise resignation announcement followed unrest by some in his conference wanting to use the pending stopgap spending bill to try to force Democrats and President Obama to take federal funding away from Planned Parenthood.
Instead, Boehner and McConnell acted rationally with a bipartisan measure that steers clear of the controversy over Planned Parenthood, and avoids the risk of a partial government shutdown.
Despite opposition, the organization–which receives nearly $500 million a year in federal funding–says it has acted “legally,” and the videos were “deceitfully edited.”
Last week, Democrats led a filibuster of a Senate stopgap measure that would have blocked money to Planned Parenthood. Eight Republicans did not support that measure, leaving it short of a majority.
After last week’s vote failed, McConnell orchestrated a bipartisan 77-19 vote on a funding bill —stripped of the Planned Parenthood provision—to force a final vote on the Senate floor.
“This bill hardly represents my preferred method for funding the government, but it’s now the most viable way forward after Democrats’ extreme actions forced our country into this situation,” McConnell said on Tuesday of the stopgap measure.
Meanwhile, the House also passed a new measure on Wednesday to eliminate Planned Parenthood’s funding as an addendum to the overall funding bill, but the measure was not expected to pass in the Senate, effectively killing it. Similar legislation restrictions being pushed under new budget rules could also result in passage that would force President Obama’s threatened veto.
