The U.S. Senate on Thursday moved toward final passage of legislation to fund the government through March 11, hoping to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of a federal government shutdown amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Senators faced a midnight Friday deadline for passing the bill and sending it to President Joe Biden for signing into law before existing federal funds expire.
This third stop-gap measure since last September, which already has been approved by the House of Representatives, would give congressional Democrats and Republicans until March 11 to reach a deal on a spending bill that would keep Washington humming through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year that began last Oct. 1.
House-Senate negotiations on a spending deal likely would appropriate around $1.5 trillion in "discretionary" funds for an array of government programs, including those administered by the Pentagon, the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other Cabinet-level departments. The last time Congress failed to fund the government was in December, 2018, when Democrats balked at funding then-President Donald Trump's U.S.-Mexico "border wall," one of his top 2016 campaign promises. During his campaign, Trump insisted Mexico would finance the vast project, an idea that the Mexican government flatly rejected, leaving U.S. taxpayers to potentially foot the bill for its construction.
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