House Passes One-Week Spending Bill to Avert Dec. 17 Shutdown

Erik Wasson
·3 min read
1

(Bloomberg) -- The US House passed a one-week stopgap spending bill Wednesday intended to avert a government shutdown early Saturday morning, when current funding authorization runs out.

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The bill, designed to give lawmakers time to finish drafting a delayed full-year fiscal 2023 spending package, passed 224 to 201. A few Republicans joined Democrats in voting yea.

It now heads to the Senate, where leaders plan to bring it to the floor as soon as Thursday.

Most Republicans lined up to oppose the bill. They argued that voters handed the GOP the House majority in the midterm elections and work on the annual spending bills should be completed next year after the chamber’s leadership changes hands.

“We should be passing a continuing resolution into next year instead of buying more time to rush through a massive spending package,” top Appropriations Committee Republican Kay Granger of Texas said on the House floor.

House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said she was “encouraged that we have come to an agreement on a framework that provides a path forward to enact an omnibus next week.

“The legislation before us today is a simple date change that keeps the government up and running as we negotiate the details of final spending bills and complete the work of funding the government programs that meet the needs of hardworking Americans.”

Quick passage of the stopgap in the Senate would require unanimous consent, including from conservatives opposed to finishing the full government spending plan before the end of the year.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, urged colleagues to pass a two-month stopgap spending bill into next year, but wouldn’t say whether he plans to block speedy action needed to avert a shutdown this week.

“It would allow Congress to approach this omnibus spending package with the kind of clear-headed thinking that is required and not under the extortive dual threat of shutdown and missing the Christmas holidays with family,” Lee said.

Senate Republican leaders are instead going along with plans by majority Democrats to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package before Dec. 23. They are backing a proposal that would increase defense spending by roughly $76 billion to $858 billion next year, while limiting domestic spending increases to a lower level. Negotiators plan to spend the coming days working out detailed agency and program spending levels.

Also left to be worked out are whether other legislation will be attached to the spending package. That includes changes in the law to make it harder to challenge the Electoral College results, a response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. That appears on track, along with $38 billion in aid to Ukraine. Increased aid to Taiwan appears likely to be included as well.

An effort to attach corporate tax breaks appears be faltering over Democratic demands to attach a child tax credit increase and an effort to open the banking system to marijuana transactions also appears to be in trouble.

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