The dome of the United States Capitol is visible on March 22, 2024 in Washington, DC.
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WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 74-24 Saturday morning to advance a massive $1.2 trillion government funding bill after heated last-minute negotiations sent senators past a midnight deadline to avoid a shutdown.
But the funding pause was temporary and technical and had no significant impact, because the White House said it had “ceased preparations for a suspension” over the Senate agreement, which got here after Republicans demanded a vote on a series of amendments.
The bill, which passed the House on Friday morning by a 268-134 vote, now goes to President Joe Biden, who has said he’ll sign it. It ends a tumultuous government funding process during a period of divided government that included a 12 months of bargaining, six months of stopgap laws and intense partisan clashes over money and politics along the way in which.
Once Biden signs the package, the total government might be funded through the top of September, after Congress passed a previous $459 billion tranche of cash earlier this month. Total spending levels for the fiscal 12 months are $1.659 trillion.
“Nothing is easy these days,” Sen. Chris Murphy, R-Conn., told NBC News after midnight through the Senate vote, but said it was vital for Congress to pass all 12 budget bills inside a 12 months.
“Given the dysfunction of the House and the slim majority here, it’s safe to say we finally got it done,” Murphy said.
The recent tranche will fund the departments of State, Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, in addition to other parts of the government that should not yet fully funded.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-LA, said it was “typical” and “immature” for the Senate to wait to take motion on the bill.
Earlier on Friday, the Senate indicated it had enough support to advance the bill to completion after a 78-18 procedural vote in favor of the measure. Just before the deadline, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that the 2 sides had reached an agreement to vote on multiple amendments after which finally pass the bill early Saturday morning.
“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we just reached an agreement to end funding for the government,” Schumer announced on the Senate floor just before midnight. “It’s good for the country that we’ve reached this bipartisan agreement.”
A divided Congress narrowly avoided multiple shutdowns this session by passing 4 stopgap bills that continually prolonged the deadline. And nearly six months into the fiscal 12 months, it’s extremely late to bargain over financing. The latest bill was published on Thursday and passed by the House on Friday morning, leaving little time for the Senate to act.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) leaves the Senate chambers on March 23, 2024, in Washington, DC.
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For a time, those talks appeared to have fizzled out at noon Friday, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. argued that the deal was thwarted by vulnerable Democrats in key Senate races, claiming they didn’t want to vote on amendments that might be used against them within the re-election campaign.
“The bottom line is that Democratic senators up for re-election are afraid to vote on amendments,” Cotton told reporters, adding without providing evidence: “Jon Tester said he would rather the government shut down and vote on Sunday night than vote over these corrections for you.”
But Tester, a Democrat who’s in a tight re-election race within the red state of Montana that would determine the Senate majority, responded sharply, telling NBC News: “That’s bullshit…”
The hesitation got here to a head when each senators spoke to different groups of reporters just meters from the Senate floor.
“Did Cotton say he was holding up the edits because of Jon Tester?” Subject shouted at Cotton through the exchange. “Because if he did, he might be full of something that falls off a cow’s back.”
Senators were frustrated that Congress had repeatedly managed to prevent funding losses on this fiscal 12 months alone, but it was difficult to accomplish that within the last fiscal 12 months.
“It makes me sick,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said in an interview, adding that she “felt like I ate too much sugar and bad pizza” when Senate Republicans were served the items for lunch.
“If we ate salmon, we would think about it because it’s like we have all these wonderful omega 3 fatty acids,” she said. “We’re like… we’re a mess of candy pizza, we act like teenagers.”
