Congress passes $1.2 trillion spending bill after short government shutdown

WASHINGTON – It's finally over: Congress passed the final six spending bills needed to fund the government until September after a short funding lapse in the wee hours of Saturday morning. It capped a series of dramatic spending fights that stretched over months.

The $1.2 trillion spending package passed the Senate early Saturday with a 74-24 vote after a long negotiation over additional policy votes with hard-right senators. Government funding ran out at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning, but because the bill will be enacted over the weekend, the effects of the shutdown will be very limited.

"It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. "It wasn't easy, but tonight, our persistence has been worth it."

The bill finalizes funding for several key agencies that represent around 70% of federal government spending, including:

• Defense Department.

• Department of Homeland Security.

• Department of Health and Human Services.

• State Department.

• Treasury Department.

• Labor Department.

• Education Department.

The vote came after hours of negotiations between conservative senators and Democratic Senate leadership over a series of policy amendments, including ones that would cut overall spending or implement new immigration policies.

Without an agreement to speed up the process, the vote would have taken place on Monday because of Senate rules. But Schumer agreed to a handful of amendment votes in exchange for that expedited vote on the spending bill.

On Friday, the bill passed the House 286-134 with more Democratic than Republican votes. Democrats have repeatedly carried spending bills and funding extensions across the finish line in recent months, illustrating the deep divisions within the Republican conference.

The funding package drew intense backlash from the most conservative lawmakers in the House, who have railed against most of the bipartisan deals passed in recent months.

They have argued that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., should have threatened a government shutdown to force additional concessions from Democrats. Johnson and most other House Republicans have maintained that shutting down the government was not an option.

Hard-right members cited myriad frustrations, arguing the spending package didn't go far enough to crack down on migration at the southern border; that it didn't cut spending enough; or because the appropriations bills combined include $14.6 billion dollars in earmarks for state and local projects.

After the bill passed the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., filed a motion to kick Johnson out of leadership – though she intentionally left out a feature that would have forced a vote on the resolution within two working days. "It's more of a warning and a pink slip," she said.

Once it got to the Senate, the pressure was on to strike a deal before the midnight deadline.

Because the upper chamber requires all 100 senators to agree to speed up proceedings, ultraconservative senators were able to force their peers to vote on amendments to the legislation. All 10 amendments voted on Friday were defeated, though some senators took the opportunity to similarly raise concerns with the spending bills on the Senate floor.

"Congress is poised to do what no American family would ever do," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who offered an amendment that would cut overall spending by 5%. "Congress is poised to spend a third more dollars than they receive. It's reckless, it leads to inflation."

What's in the bill?

Still, Republican leaders touted several of their own victories from the bipartisan compromise.

GOP negotiators championed an increase in funding for 22,000 Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention bed capacity for migrants at the southern border.

They also halted funding for UNRWA, a United Nations relief agency that is providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza after Israel's allegations that 12 of the agency's staffers abetted Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, which was long a Republican priority.

Many of the 22 House Democrats who voted against the bill opposed the elimination of funding for the aid organization.

Democrats were also able to tout their own wins, hailing a new $1 billion investment in child care and Head Start, an early childhood development program for low-income families. They also secured new funding for Alzheimer's research and cancer research, among other initiatives.

But Democrats also celebrated what was not included in the bill, beating back Republican demands for conservative policy add-ons.

"We had to work under very difficult topline numbers and fight off literally hundreds of extreme, Republican poison pills from the House, not to mention some unthinkable cuts," Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said on the Senate floor Friday. "But at the end of the day this is a bill that will keep our country and our families moving forward."

How did we get here?

The spending bills passed around six months into the fiscal year it was intended to fund, and it was a rocky road to get there.

It all started last May, when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden struck a deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for caps on future spending, dubbed "The Fiscal Responsibility Act."

When it came time to write appropriations bills that fit that deal, hard-right Republicans demanded deeper spending cuts. McCarthy worked with Democrats to avoid a shutdown by extending the funding deadline past September.

He paid for it with his job. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., led the charge to oust him from the Speakership. Three chaotic weeks followed until Johnson was elected to lead the chamber.

Johnson then faced similar pressure from his right flank to extract more policy wins from Democrats. The funding deadline was extended three times as negotiators failed to reach a deal before finally reaching an agreement on the bills in March.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Congress passes $1.2 trillion spending bill after short shutdown