WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed a stopgap spending bill Thursday that would avoid a short-term shutdown and fund the federal government through Feb. 18 after leaders defused a partisan standoff over federal vaccination mandates. The measure now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
Earlier in the day, congressional leaders announced they had finally reached an agreement to keep the government running for 11 more weeks, generally at current spending levels, while adding $7 billion to aid Afghanistan evacuees.
Once the House voted to approve the measure, senators soon announced an agreement that would allow them to vote on it quickly.
"I am glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed. The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink of an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown," said Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.
The Senate approved the measure by a vote of 69-28. The Democratic-led House passed the measure by a 221-212 vote. The Republican leadership urged members to vote no. The lone GOP vote for the bill came from Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
Appropriators have said they hope the new deadline will give them time to negotiate the 12 full-year government spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
For the second day in a row, a group of Republicans led by Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas threatened to hold up the government funding measure in protest of a presidential directive that orders large employers to require coronavirus vaccinations for workers or implement comprehensive testing programs. The Biden administration has pursued vaccination requirements for several groups of workers, but the effort is facing legal setbacks.
The White House sees the vaccinations as the quickest way to end a pandemic that has killed more than 780,000 people in the United States and is still evolving, as seen Wednesday with the country's first detected case of a troubling new variant.
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A federal judge this week blocked the administration from enforcing a vaccination mandate on thousands of health care workers in 10 states. Earlier, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement affecting employers with 100 or more workers.
The Biden administration has also put in place policies requiring millions of federal employees and federal contractors, including military troops, to be fully vaccinated. Those efforts are also under challenge.
Polling from The Associated Press shows Americans are divided over Biden's effort to vaccinate workers, with Democrats overwhelmingly for it while most Republicans are against.
"We have seen in the course of this pandemic Democrats being very comfortable with being petty tyrants and decreeing that you must obey their medical mandates," said Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who has played a lead role in prompting at least one government shutdown in the past.
Some Republicans prefer an effort from Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., to vote to reject the administration's mandates in a congressional review action expected next week, separate from the funding fight.
Separately, some health care providers protested the stopgap spending measure. Hospitals say it does nothing to shield them from Medicare payment cuts scheduled to go into effect amid uncertainty about the new omicron variant.
The GOP blockade created significant political headaches for Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who endorsed the bipartisan funding deal earlier in the day.
VACCINATION AMENDMENT
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Marshall wrote an amendment that prohibited federal dollars being spent to implement and enforce a series of vaccination mandates put in place by the Biden administration. The amendment went down to defeat 48-50. But having the vote opened the door to taking up the full spending bill immediately.
Lawmakers bemoaned the short-term fix and blamed the opposing party for the lack of progress on this year's spending bills. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the measure would, however, allow for negotiations on a package covering the full budget year through September.
Before the votes, Biden said he had spoken with Senate leaders and he played down fears of a shutdown.
"There is a plan in place unless somebody decides to be totally erratic, and I don't think that will happen," Biden said.
Some Republicans opposed to Biden's vaccination rules wanted Congress to take a hard stand against the mandated shots for workers at larger businesses, even if that meant shutting down federal offices over the weekend by blocking a request that would expedite a final vote on the spending bill.
"I've been very supportive of a mandate for federal government, for military, for all the people who work on a government payroll," Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said. "I've been less enthused about it in the private sector."
"We have everything in place to be able to make sure there is not a shutdown," Biden said.
On Capitol Hill, meanwhile, some Republicans appeared frustrated by the political predicament created by members of their own party -- especially since the funding bill has the votes necessary to pass.
Washington is no stranger to government shutdowns, though each one is different in its scope, duration and the number of Americans it affects. For the most part, many federal operations continue during a funding lapse: Social Security and Medicare benefits do not halt, the Postal Service continues delivering mail, and military functions can proceed.
At times, though, the disruptions can prove significant.
It was just the latest instance of the brinkmanship around government funding that has triggered several costly shutdowns and partial closures over the past two decades. The longest shutdown in history happened under President Donald Trump -- 35 days stretching into January 2019, when Democrats refused to approve money for his U.S-Mexico border wall.
Both parties agree the stoppages are irresponsible, yet few deadlines pass without a late scramble to avoid them.
For many workers, meanwhile, the implications can be severe.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are often sent home or forced to work without pay. Those furloughs and other consequences may not rear their heads in the event the shutdown only occurs into a weekend, but the disruptions could prove more troublesome for families and businesses in the event that it drags on for an extended period of time.
With these consequences in mind, Democrats and Republicans began Thursday on a positive political note, brandishing a new funding deal.
FINGER-POINTING
Known as a continuing resolution, it is set to cover federal operations into Feb. 18 -- at which point lawmakers either must adopt another short-term deal or complete their work on roughly a dozen longer-term appropriations bills that fund the government for the remainder of fiscal 2022.
Those fights entering February are likely to be fierce, as Democrats hope to deliver on Biden's budgetary goals, spending greater sums in areas including health and education, while Republicans hope to whittle down those amounts and devote more resources to the Pentagon. Democrats and Republicans also have squared off on a host of policy items, including the fate of the Hyde Amendment, which blocks federal funding for abortion -- a provision Democrats hope to scrap despite unwavering GOP objections.
Lee said millions of people were being forced to choose between an unwanted medical procedure and losing their job.
"Their jobs are being threatened by their own government," Lee said.
"Let's give employers certainty and employees peace of mind that they will still have a job this new year," Marshall urged before the vote.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., countered that the federal government should be using every tool to keep Americans safe and that is why the Biden administration has taken steps to urge employers to make sure their workers are fully vaccinated or test negative before they go come to the workplace.
"No one wants to go to work and be worried they might come home to their family with a deadly virus," Murray said.
For some Republicans, the court cases and lawmakers' fears about a potentially disruptive shutdown were factors against engaging in a high-stakes shutdown.
"One of the things I'm a little concerned about is: Why would we make ourselves the object of public attention by creating the specter of a government shutdown?" said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a GOP leader.
Republicans and Democrats showed no signs of being able to resolve the larger impasse blocking full-year appropriations bills.
Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, stressed before the vote that lawmakers still have work to do on the spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
"Further refusal to meet at the negotiating table will only undermine national security, our ability to invest in American families, and our capability to respond to the coronavirus and its emerging variants," Leahy said.
DeLauro urged Republicans to make a full-year funding counteroffer soon to finish work on appropriations bills.
"Let me be clear: Working families, small businesses, veterans and our military need the certainty that comes with passing omnibus funding legislation instead of short-term funding patches," DeLauro said on the House floor.
Top Senate Republican appropriator Richard Shelby said Democrats need to drop policy proposals such as allowing government funding for abortions before Republicans talk about funding levels.
"If that doesn't happen, we'll be having this same conversation in February," Shelby said.
The stopgap does not address automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs scheduled for January under the so-called Paygo law, despite Democratic efforts to include the provision.
Information for this article was contributed by Tony Romm, Mike DeBonis and Tyler Pager of The Washington Post; by Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of The Associated Press; and by Erik Wasson and Laura Litvan of Bloomberg News .
