Congress avoids government shutdown after approving funding bill at the last minute

The House passed a funding bill to avert a partial government shutdown on Friday, hours before the deadline at midnight. Then the Senate, past midnight in Washington, D.C., and after a momentary shutdown, voted to approve the bill.

The bill now goes to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

The Office of Management and Budget "has ceased shutdown preparations because there is a high degree of confidence that Congress will imminently pass the relevant appropriations and the president will sign the bill into law on Saturday," White House Deputy Press Secretary Emilie Simons said earlier.

The package, hotly contested by Republican hardliners, passed the House 366-34, with near-unanimous support from 196 Democrats and 170 Republicans.

In the Senate, the budget deal passed shortly after midnight with an overwhelming margin of 85 votes in favor and 11 against.

This is the third bill introduced in recent days. The first, rejected on Wednesday, was met with backlash from Donald Trump and his allies, including Elon Musk, which caused lawmakers to begin tough rounds of negotiations until they reached a Continuing Resolution (C.R.) acceptable to both sides.

Then on Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson presented Republicans with a bill far less massive than Wednesday's, which was more than 1,500 pages long. That measure, which was streamlined to just 116 pages, did not cut any of the key spending demanded by Democrats, but did include a key request from President Trump on extending the debt limit.

But neither Democrats nor hard-line Republicans supported the bill, which failed miserably on the floor.

Finally, after intense negotiations, Johnson and Democratic leaders reached a deal Friday: a nearly identical bill, but without Trump's key debt-limit request.

The spending package includes more than $110 billion in disaster aid and a one-year extension of the farm bill, items that generated common ground between Republicans and Democrats.

After the approval, Speaker Johnson was optimistic the agreement after days of uncertainty.

"We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations to our farmers who need help, to disaster victims across the country and to make sure that the military and essential services and everyone who relies on the federal government for a paycheck gets paid during the vacations," Johnson said.

For his part, Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader, bluntly celebrated the bill's passage.

"House Democrats have successfully funded the government at the levels requested by President Biden to meet the needs of the American people.... This is a victory for the American people."

Unlike yesterday, President Trump still did not sign off on the bill, but Elon Musk took to X to praise Johnson's effort and leadership in these pivotal hours.

The House’s passage of the bill comes as the national debt has surpassed $36 trillion and the deficit exceeds $1.8 trillion.

This is a developing story.