Congress sends President Biden a new stopgap bill to keep federal government open

A par­tial fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down has been once again been avert­ed thanks to the eleventh hour pas­sage of a bill in Con­gress to keep pub­lic agen­cies and the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary hum­ming for anoth­er few weeks.

H.R. 2872 today received affir­ma­tive bipar­ti­san votes in both cham­bers, set­ting the stage for Pres­i­dent Joe Biden to sign it into law tomor­row. The leg­is­la­tion push­es the threat of a shut­down out at least sev­er­al more weeks (to ear­ly March), just as bills passed in Sep­tem­ber and Novem­ber of last year did. And, as before, the leg­is­la­tion passed over the angry objec­tions of the House Repub­li­cans’ Fas­cist Fac­tion, who have been try­ing to force a gov­ern­ment shut­down for months.

In the Sen­ate, the vote to pass H.R. 2872 was 77–11. In the House, it was 314 to 108. Almost all oppo­si­tion came from Repub­li­cans. Two Democ­rats in the House, upset about the lack of action on aid for Ukraine, vot­ed nay.

Orig­i­nal­ly, H.R. 2872 was a bill “to amend the Per­ma­nent Elec­tron­ic Duck Stamp Act of 2013 to allow the Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or to issue elec­tron­ic stamps under such Act, and for oth­er pur­pos­es.” It was repur­posed to serve as a vehi­cle for the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion and has been rechris­tened the Fur­ther Addi­tion­al Con­tin­u­ing Appro­pri­a­tions and Oth­er Exten­sions Act, 2024 fol­low­ing the Sen­ate’s adop­tion of a sub­sti­tute pro­posed by our very own Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

Accord­ing to a press release from the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Appro­pri­a­tions (which Mur­ray chairs), the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion extends fund­ing through the fol­low­ing dates for the fol­low­ing fed­er­al depart­ments and purposes:

• March 1st, 2024 for four appro­pri­a­tions bills: Agri­cul­ture, Rur­al Devel­op­ment, Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; Ener­gy and Water Devel­op­ment; Mil­i­tary Con­struc­tion, Vet­er­ans Affairs, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; and Trans­porta­tion, Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment, and Relat­ed Agencies.
• March 8th, 2024 for the remain­ing eight appro­pri­a­tions bills: Com­merce, Jus­tice, Sci­ence, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; Defense; Finan­cial Ser­vices and Gen­er­al Gov­ern­ment; Home­land Secu­ri­ty; Inte­ri­or, Envi­ron­ment, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; Labor, Health and Human Ser­vices, Edu­ca­tion, and Relat­ed Agen­cies; Leg­isla­tive Branch; and State, For­eign Oper­a­tions, and Relat­ed Programs.

A sec­tion-by-sec­tion of the con­tin­u­ing res­o­lu­tion is avail­able at this link.

The full leg­isla­tive text is also avail­able.

The roll call in the Sen­ate was as follows:

Vot­ing yea to keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment open: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell (WA), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (OR), Jon Tester (MT); Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Lisa Murkows­ki and Dan Sul­li­van (AK), Steve Daines (MT)

Vot­ing nay to par­tial­ly shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Mike Crapo and Jim Risch (ID)

The roll call in the House was as follows:

Vot­ing yea to keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment open: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Marie Glue­senkamp Perez, Derek Kilmer, Prami­la Jaya­pal, Kim Schri­er, Adam Smith, and Mar­i­lyn Strick­land (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Sali­nas (OR), Mary Pel­to­la (AK); Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Dan New­house and Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers (WA), Cliff Bentz and Lori Chavez-DeRe­mer (OR), Mike Simp­son (ID), Ryan Zinke (MT)

Vot­ing nay to par­tial­ly shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Rosendale (MT)

Not vot­ing: Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Russ Fulcher (ID)

“I have been work­ing non­stop with my col­leagues in both cham­bers to keep this process mov­ing as quick­ly as we pos­si­bly can so that we can write and pass the strongest pos­si­ble fund­ing bills,” Sen­a­tor Mur­ray said on the Sen­ate floor in remarks urg­ing a yes vote. “Pass­ing this mea­sure will allow us the time we need to ham­mer out those fund­ing bills for Fis­cal Year ‘24 — after many months of need­less delays. I think we all want this to be a dra­ma-free and reli­able process. So I hope that House Repub­li­cans will work with us to make that pos­si­ble now too — which means leav­ing extreme par­ti­san demands at the door.”

And enough of them did, allow­ing H.R. 2872 to clear the leg­isla­tive branch before law­mak­ers head­ed to the air­port to return home to their districts.

“Today, with yet anoth­er upcom­ing gov­ern­ment fund­ing dead­line, I vot­ed to pro­tect South­west Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies and our econ­o­my from a destruc­tive gov­ern­ment shut­down,” said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp Perez in a state­ment sent to the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute.

“Nev­er­the­less, repeat­ed­ly fund­ing our gov­ern­ment with tem­po­rary stop­gap mea­sures shouldn’t become the new nor­mal. It’s why I intro­duced bipar­ti­san leg­is­la­tion to revamp our annu­al bud­get process and final­ly address our grow­ing deficit for the sake of Amer­i­can taxpayers.”

“It’s my hope that Con­gress will con­tin­ue work­ing to reach bipar­ti­san agree­ment on full-year fund­ing bills, as well as much-need­ed sup­port to secure our South­ern Bor­der and assis­tance for our allies Ukraine and Israel to defend their democ­ra­cies. I remain eager to work with my Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­leagues on fund­ing bills that pri­or­i­tize the needs of South­west Washington.”

If the past is any indi­ca­tion, though, we’ll see anoth­er stop­gap fund­ing bill in March that will push the threat of a par­tial shut­down out to May or June.