The lights will stay on in the nation’s capital after all.
Today, on the last day that Congress could make a move before the fiscal year end, the Senate and House both voted on a measure to avoid a government shutdown. But don’t get too excited. While the agreement is better than the alternative (no movement at all), it’s only a temporary stopgap measure. The Senate’s version of the bill will only fund the government through December 11.
(You can read the text of the bill here.)
The bill passed in the Senate with a 78 to 20 vote and in the House with a 277 to 151 vote. All 20 no votes in the Senate came from Republicans as did all 151 no votes in the House. President Obama is expected to sign the bill into law.
(See how the vote broke down in the Senate here and in the House here.)
The bill is exactly what you’d expect for a temporary bill: largely the bare necessities. The bill does not strike funding for Planned Parenthood, which is why so many Republicans voted it down. Defunding Planned Parenthood has become a rallying cry for conservatives on the Hill who earlier threatened to stall negotiations unless the measure was included; the vote was eventually pushed through without the language but you should expect to hear rumblings about Planned Parenthood again once Congress takes up the appropriations bill again.
(The seven issues that were holding Congress back, including Planned Parenthood, are still relevant. You can read about them here.)
Discussions about a full term funding bill should resume quickly but they won’t be the only big budget issues for Congress to tackle. In addition to appropriations, Congress has yet to decide whether to approve tax extenders for 2015 (no, not a typo, the measure would be retroactive to January 1, 2015, for the 2015 tax year) as well as whether to raise the nation’s debt limit.
Earlier this month, over 2,000 businesses sent a letter to Congress urging them to take action on the tax extenders bill. They are hoping to avoid a situation like last year when the Senate waited until just over two weeks left in the calendar year to pass a bill that extended certain tax provisions through December 31, 2014 (retroactive to January 1, 2014).
The Treasury Department sent its own letter to Congress this month, as well, with Secretary Lew advising that he was “writing to provide an update regarding the Treasury Department’s ability to continue to finance the government, the extraordinary measures we have undertaken to avoid default, and our current levels of cash on hand.” The details of the letter were grim, with Secretary Lew advising that without a Congressional vote to raise the debt limit ceiling, the United States will default on its obligations sometime this fall.
