Congress passes short-term government funding bill to avert a shutdown

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - In succession, the House and Senate passed a short-term government funding bill on Wednesday to avert a government shutdown.

The bill now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk ahead of the September 30th shutdown deadline. He is expected to sign it.

“Today, the House did the necessary thing. We took the initiative and passed a clean, narrow three months CR,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).

The bill funds the government through Dec. 20 by extending funding at existing levels and includes additional money for increased U.S. Secret Service protection for presidential candidates in the wake of two recent assassiantion attempts against former President Donald Trump.

While many lawmakers were happy they avoided the shutdown, some are already thinking about the work that lays ahead in just a few weeks.

“Our work does not end here. My hope is that now we can get going in earnest on hammering out bipartisan, full year funding bills,” said Sen. Patty Murray, (D-WA).

“We just really have a very clean stopgap funding measure that’s going to give us a position to really do our work when we come back,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, (R-SD).

Members of Congress are eager to return home to campaign and will return to Washington after the upcoming election on Nov. 12.

The bill comes after former President Trump insisted on a shutdown unless Republicans passed a proof-of-citizenship voter registration bill, the SAVE Act.

After that effort failed, House Speaker Johnson decided to move forward with a continuing resolution without it. When it came time for the vote on Wednesday, 82 members of his own party voted against it.

The bill sets up another government funding fight in the midst of the holiday season, sending lawmakers down a road that have now visited many times before.

“It’s totally unnecessary that we’re having this continuing resolution and putting everything off,” said Sen. Angus King, (I-ME). “We’re not going to know anything in December that we don’t know now. And it ought to be done now. But we’ve fallen into this habit, which I think is very unfortunate.”

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