Congress votes to keep US government open

Congress passed legislation on Thursday extending government spending through December 3 to avert a shutdown just hours before current funding expires.

Democrats initially sought to attach a suspension of the debt ceiling to the funding bill, but Republicans refused to vote to increase the borrowing limit.

President Joe Biden must sign the bill before midnight to avoid a partial government shutdown, which would leave thousands of federal employees without pay.

The US Senate initially passed a measure to keep the government funded through December and avoid yet another federal shutdown.

Lawmakers faced a midnight deadline before funding lapses, which could force federal museums, national parks and safety programs to close.

The government funding bill includes money for hurricane relief and for resettling Afghan refugees.

On Thursday, the measure to keep the government open temporarily passed the Senate by a vote of 65 to 35, with 15 Republicans voting to support it.

The newly approved funding ensures that federal agencies do not need to close down on Friday and hundreds of thousands of government employees will not have to take unpaid leave.

Of particular concern, given the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, was the potential hit that health services could take.

A shutdown plan prepared by the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) found that it may have been forced to send up to 43% of its staff home in the event of a shutdown.

Republicans and Democrats reached a deal to keep the government open on Wednesday night, but other policy hurdles remain.

It has been a jam-packed week for lawmakers, who have been negotiating for weeks over President Biden’s economic agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will move forward with a vote on a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which would provide $550 billion in new funding for roads, bridges, internet and other domestic priorities.

Congress is faced with another deadline, when the US government is to hit its borrowing limit within a few weeks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the federal government will reach its limit on how much it can borrow by October 18, which could stop payment of bills the Congress already approved and for which lawmakers allocated funding.

The administrative imperative does not create new debt or add to the government’s spending, but failing to allow those bills to get paid might trigger a catastrophic default on the national debt that could reverberate through the US and the global economy.

Raising the debt limit will allow the US government to pay its existing obligations. Defaulting, though unlikely, could trigger an economic downturn and cause millions of Americans who rely on paychecks or aid from the federal government to go without.

The House, which is controlled by the Democrats, had already voted to pass a funding measure to keep the government open last week, combining it with a measure to suspend the debt ceiling.

But Republicans in the Senate blocked the bill from advancing, hoping any disaster the Biden administration encounters could give voters a reason not to support Democrats in the next election. Despite such barbaric GOP tactics, along with such cheating as creating maps that deny Democrats any hope of winning and voter suppression efforts, corporate Democrats still advocate bipartisanship as if their political adversaries were not willing to destroy the nation if it gave them a partisan advantage in elections.

The measure to keep the government open will need to pass the House again before becoming law.