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WASHINGTON – The United States Senate adopted a short-term budget bill today that extends federal funding at current levels until December 23, joining the House of Representatives to avert a shutdown of federal services.
Senators voted 71-19 in favour of the bill, which the House approved yesterday. It now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature.
Congress has thus given itself another week to negotiate a longer-term spending deal covering through the end of fiscal 2023.
Lawmakers acted with growing urgency to secure the funding, as Congress had until midnight today to adopt some kind of spending bill.
Otherwise funding for federal services would have been cut and operations across swathes of the government would have screeched to a halt.
The temporary bill will now give Congress another week to reach a compromise.
Governmental departments and other federal buildings, but also national parks, some museums, and other organisations would have been impacted in a shutdown, forcing the furlough of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
A winter 2018-2019 shutdown, the longest in US history, even affected baggage screening at airports.
Despite strong partisan divisions, most elected officials in both the Democratic and Republican parties did not want a shutdown, which risked creating chaos before the holidays.
The two parties are currently unable to agree on a final budget for the fiscal year 2023. – AFP, December 16, 2022