The House has just passed a spending bill to avert a government shutdown:
House narrowly backs short-term spending bill, a 1st step in averting a government shutdown at midnight Friday. https://t.co/6Oq5J5u3la
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 21, 2017
Here’s more from the AP:
The Republican-led House narrowly passed a temporary spending bill to avert a government shutdown Thursday, doing the bare minimum in a sprint toward the holidays and punting disputes on immigration, health care and national security to next year.
The vote was 231-188 with Democrats criticizing Republicans’ inability to complete the dozen spending bills for the current fiscal year and relying on a third stopgap bill since the year’s Oct. 1 start. The Senate was expected to vote on the short-term legislation late Thursday.
The wrap-up measure allows Republicans controlling Washington to savor their win on this week’s $1.5 trillion tax package — even as they kick a full lineup of leftover work into the new year. Congress will return in January facing enormous challenges on immigration, the federal budget, health care and national security along with legislation to increase the government’s authority to borrow money.
The stopgap legislation would keep the government from closing down at midnight Friday. It has traversed a tortured path, encountering resistance from the GOP’s most ardent allies of the military, as well as opposition from Democrats who demanded but were denied a vote on giving immigrants brought to the country as children and in the country illegally an opportunity to become citizens.
The House then passed, by a bipartisan 251-169 tally, a $81 billion measure to deliver rebuilding aid to hurricane victims in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other parts of the Caribbean as well as fire-ravaged states. But the Senate was unlikely to go along as both Republicans and Democrats want changes.
Ok first of all 231-188 isn’t a ‘narrow’ margin. Heck the tax bill was closer than that and I don’t recall anyone calling it narrow.
Secondly this kicks the can down the road until January, unfortunately. Republicans control everything so they really need to get a budget passed and soo so they don’t have to keep doing this.
The bill will now go to the Senate for their approval: