Exiting Congress OKs stopgap spending

WASHINGTON — Congress on Wednesday night passed a stopgap spending bill that’s needed to avert a government shutdown Friday, paving the way for lawmakers to bolt Washington for the fall campaign.

The Senate late Wednesday approved 69-30 the temporary spending bill, which is needed to keep federal agencies operating when the new budget year starts. The House followed suit several hours later with a 228-194 vote, sending it to President Barack Obama early today.

Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas both voted to pass the bill. Democratic Reps. Marion Berry, Mike Ross and Vic Snyder of Arkansas also voted to pass the bill, while Rep. John Boozman, R-Ark., voted against it.

The bill funds the government at current levels through early December. Lawmakers will return after the elections to vote on extending tax cuts and, perhaps, a catchall spending bill wrapping all of Congress’ unfinished spending bills into one giant measure for fiscal 2011,which begins Friday.

A so-called stopgap spending bill is often required to avoid a government shutdown like the partial shutterings in 1995-96 that cost the Republicans politically.

With their House and Senate majorities on the line, Democratic leaders called off votes and even debates on all contentious matters.

“It would be one thing if you have a chance to pass something, then by all means have a vote,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Wednesday. “But it was pretty clear that it was going to be mutually assured destruction.”

One foot out the door, the House and Senate convened just long enough to vote on a “continuing resolution,” a measure to keep the government in operating funds for the next two months and avoid a preelection federal shutdown.

“We may not agree on much, but I think, with rare exception, all 100 senators want to get out of here and get back to their states,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is locked in a tough re-election fight against Republican Sharron Angle in Nevada.

Staying or going might seem an equally unpleasant prospectfor some embattled Democrats, who are facing more than four weeks of defending unpopular votes in favor of Obama’s economic stimulus measure, health-care law and uncompleted legislation for curbing global warming.

They also head home without what was supposed to be their closing argument of the campaign, an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for families making less than $250,000.

Republicans and a few Democrats urged Congress to preserve the tax cuts for all Americans, even the wealthiest. Democratic leaders opted to avoid the risk of being branded for raising taxes and punted the matter until after the elections.

Republicans applied the label anyway, scolding Democrats for folding the tent without voting on extending former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts beyond their Dec. 31 expiration. In the House, a motion to adjourn upon completing routine business passed by a single vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, after 39 Democrats joined Republicans in protest.

“If Democratic leaders leave town without stopping all of the tax hikes, they are turning their backs onthe American people,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Pelosi, D-Calif., has vowed that the middle-class tax cuts will be passed this year.

Republicans also denounced Democrats for delaying the ethics trials of Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., until after the elections. Both lawmakers had said they wanted trials as soon as possible.

First lady Michelle Obama’s campaign for healthier school lunches has also stalled in Congress after anti-hunger groups and more than 100 Democrats protested the use of food-stamp dollars to pay for it. The Senate passed the $4.5 billion legislation in August, and many of the childnutrition programs it includes are to expire today. They’ll be temporarily extended under the stopgap bill.

In the waning hours before adjournment, Democrats moved what smaller legislation they could.

Only two of a dozen annual appropriations bills have passed the House this year, and none has passed the Senate as Democratic leaders have opted against lengthy floor debates and politically difficult votes on spending.