House Passes Three Week Funding Measure; Averts Shutdown

The House of Representatives passed a stopgap funding measure on Tuesday night to keep the U.S. government up and running through March 11.

Current funding is expected to run out Feb. 18, and without a full-year funding bill or this continuing resolution, the government would shut down at midnight on that date.

This short-term bill is designed to give negotiators more time to reach a bipartisan agreement on full-year spending bills. It passed the House 272-163.

The Senate must now pass the same legislation and send it to President Joe Biden‘s desk to avoid a government shutdown next week.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chairwoman of the House Committee on Appropriations, introduced the stopgap bill Monday.

“Our country needs a government funding agreement to create good-paying jobs, grow opportunity for the middle class and protect our national security. We are close to reaching a framework government funding agreement, but we will need additional time to complete the legislation in full,” she said in a statement accompanying the bill’s introduction.

This is the third time since September that Congress has relied on a temporary stopgap funding bill in the absence of a long-term budget.

Lawmakers voted in September to begin the new fiscal year under a continuing resolution that lasted through Dec. 3. During that two-month extension, Democrats and Republicans didn’t make any significant progress, opting to use a second-short term spending measure to keep the lights on through Feb. 18.

Negotiations have picked up the pace during the last few weeks, but both political parties say they need more time to decide exactly how much to spend on federal programs this year.

“It is essential that we enact an omnibus in order to unlock billions in more federal dollars for infrastructure projects,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday during floor debate. “While they were in the infrastructure bill, the money cannot be spent unless we pass the omnibus.”

Democrats and Republicans agree they’d like this to be the last time they kick the can down the road, in part because these stopgap bills mostly bar federal departments from starting new projects and hold down federal spending to levels last agreed to in December 2020.

“Our military commanders and their civilian bosses badly need our country to escape the hamster wheel of chronic continuing resolutions,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday. “The urgent task of continuing to modernize and strengthen our military requires predictable budgeting and advance planning.”

 

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