President Joe Biden on Saturday morning signed a stopgap funding extension into law, bringing to a close a dramatic turn of events culminating in the Senate clearing the legislation shortly after a midnight deadline. Biden’s signature staves off a partial government shutdown, ending days of gridlock over a package whose contents seemed to change by the hour.
Eager to head out of town for the Christmas recess, the Senate won unanimous consent to speed up the legislative clock and clear the measure needed by Friday night, when current funding was set to expire. While final passage technically exceeded the deadline, no shutdown is ordered if a bill is on its way to completion.
The measure, which President Joe Biden signed later Saturday, extends current funding through March 14 and provides about $110 billion in disaster and farm aid.
The 85-11 Senate vote came hours after the House passed the measure on a 366-34 vote, well above the two-thirds majority threshold required under that chamber’s suspension of the rules procedure. GOP leaders’ decision to drop a two-year suspension of the statutory debt ceiling that was in a version rejected Thursday night was the catalyst for Friday’s dramatic turn of events.
“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families — provide emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters, no debt ceiling, and it will keep the government open with no draconian cuts,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said in a statement before the final vote.
In the House, almost all Democrats voted “no” Thursday along with 38 Republicans. On the do-over Friday night sans debt limit, all Democrats except for one — Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who voted “present” — backed the bill while 34 Republicans voted against it.
Before the vote, House Democrats called a caucus meeting to discuss the new version of the bill, which was posted with minor changes from Thursday night’s bill as well as the big, substantive change that cut the debt limit provision Trump wanted. After the meeting, Democrats said they’d come around and were likely to support the measure in enough numbers to pass via suspension of the rules.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed the measure after the party caucus meeting, saying that “it’s a win for the American people” because it would provide needed aid without touching the debt limit. “Everything else [in the bill] is a win for the American people, and the debt limit is out,” he said.
Democrats opposed inclusion of the debt limit provision, arguing it would make it easier on Republicans next year to cut taxes and ram through other partisan priorities. Cutting the debt limit language was enough to convince Democrats to go along with the stripped-down bill, even though it excluded a host of their priorities contained in an initial 1,547-page bipartisan measure.
The decision to scrap that initial version came at the behest of Tesla Inc.