The U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree is up outdoors the constructing the place GOP leaders are furiously scrambling to discover a option to keep away from a authorities shutdown on the finish of the day on Friday.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
The Senate voted 85-11 to approve a short-term spending invoice to fund the federal government till March 14. The measure had overwhelming bipartisan assist in each chambers after days of chaos brought on by the last-minute intervention of President-elect Donald Trump.
Along with the federal funding, the newest GOP proposal contains $100 billion in assist to communities recovering from pure disasters, together with 2023 wildfires in Maui and more moderen, post-hurricane flooding in North Carolina.
The proposal additionally features a one-year extension of federal farm coverage and assist to farmers. It doesn’t embrace any try to deal with the nation’s borrowing restrict, regardless of calls for from Trump.
These calls for and criticism from a top-Trump adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, undermined a bipartisan settlement that was reached earlier this week. That left Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., making an attempt to stability Trump’s coverage calls for with the realities of a razor-thin Republican majority within the Home, Democratic-controlled Senate and a fast-approaching deadline.
Nonetheless, one of many insurance policies stripped from the unique deal was nonetheless authorised on Friday. The Senate unanimously authorised the Gabriella Miller Youngsters First Analysis Act, a invoice that had already handed the Home and can present greater than $12 million a yr in funding for pediatric most cancers analysis for 5 years.
The White Home additionally backed the settlement Friday, with Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre saying in a press release: “President Biden helps shifting this laws ahead and guaranteeing that the important companies the federal government offers for hardworking People — from issuing Social Safety checks to processing advantages for veterans — can proceed in addition to to grant help for communities that have been impacted by devastating hurricanes.”
The newest congressional conflict evoked a way of deja vu on Capitol Hill from Trump’s first time period, when he would typically change his calls for in actual time and without warning announcement on social media.
Republicans will proceed to face comparable challenges within the subsequent Congress as they try to cross laws with one other razor-thin Home majority and a Republican-controlled — however closely-divided — Senate.
