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washingtonpost.com
Government shutdown averted as Senate passes $459 billion funding bill
Jacob Bogage

The Senate voted Friday to prevent a partial government shutdown that was
set to begin in mere hours by approving legislation to fund roughly 30
percent of the federal government for the next six months, sending it to President Biden to sign into law.

The legislation — which passed by a 75 to 22 vote — devotes $459 billion
to the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs, as
well as the Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug
Administration, for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. The
House passed the measure on Wednesday.

But a larger, trickier deadline for the rest of the government — including
the Defense, State and Homeland Security departments — looms just two
weeks away, and negotiators are still far apart on spending amounts and
policy provisions necessary to fund those agencies.

“Because both sides cooperated today, we've taken a major step toward our
goal of fully funding the government,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor. “Today's bipartisan agreement
gives us momentum and space to finish the remaining appropriations bills
by March 22. Of course, it's going to take both sides working together to
keep that momentum alive.”

That legislation, though, threatens to get wrapped into testier talks
around U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel and security at the U.S.-Mexico
border. President Biden in his State of the Union address Thursday
forcefully pressed the case for sending tens of billions of dollars in additional arms and resources to Ukraine to fight off Russian invaders. He wants to send billions more to Israel to defeat Hamas terrorists and
provide humanitarian aid for displaced Palestinian civilians, and tied
those messages together on spending in his address with his pro-democracy foreign policy approach.



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Anyone that isn't confused doesn't really
understand the situation.
~Edward R. Murrow USA WWII Correspondent ==================================================

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