Senate passes bill to prevent government shutdown before deadline: NPR

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kai, reached the U.S. Capitol on Friday as lawmakers faced a midnight deadline to pass a bill to fund the government.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kai, reached the U.S. Capitol on Friday as lawmakers faced a midnight deadline to pass a bill to fund the government.

Stephanie Reynolds / Getty Images

Updated at 2:01 p.m.

After facing a series of delays, the Senate passed a one-week provisional funding measure by voice vote to prevent a government shutdown just hours before the critical deadline.

The bill now goes to the President’s desk for his signature. Without it, federal agencies would run out of money by midnight on Friday.

The move comes as Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Saunders breaks down on his demands to vote first on allowing direct payments to Americans.

“I’m not one of the members of the Senate, I do or will do and keep people on the weekends, I do not do that,” Sanders said on the Senate floor before the voice vote.

The move will intensify the highly dramatic scene raised in the Senate overnight, raising concerns that the sequence of fights between various members could lead to closure.

However, Sanders said he would raise his demands again when the stopgap measure, also known as the continuous resolution, was due to end in a week. He said Congress should not go home for the holidays without addressing the coronavirus relief aid.

“I’m ready to withdraw my objection at this point, but I’m not ready to withdraw my objection next week,” Sanders said. “We will solve the financial crisis facing billions of Americans.”

Senator Bernie Saunders has been pushing for a commitment to vote to include another round of stimulus checks in the coronavirus relief package before agreeing to move forward on the funding bill for a week. He was outraged at those plans.

Senate Television via AP

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Senate Television via AP

Senator Bernie Saunders has been pushing for a commitment to vote to include another round of stimulus checks in the coronavirus relief package before agreeing to move forward on the funding bill for a week. He was outraged at those plans.

Senate Television via AP

It was one of several attempts to delay Senate legislation before Friday afternoon.

A group of Republican members is working for a provision to prevent members of Congress from receiving pay during future government shutdowns.

Senator Mike Braun of Indiana said he was one of the GOP members seeking a voteNo budget, no pay “bill Before the vote on the stopgap measure. However, the measure was not resolved on the Senate floor before the temporary funding measure was approved.

“We’ll try to vote on something,” Brown told a Capitol Hillpool reporter before a voice vote.

The stopgap measure was also delayed as a result of a traffic jam in the Senate.

There is law Approved by a large majority in the House of Representatives On Wednesday. When it came to the Senate, the National Defense Authority that first came to the Senate was trapped behind the law.

It was Friday as well.

“The two-year, bipartisan effort will end in a full-year funding bill, but the Senate needs to approve the stop-gap funding measure today,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kai, said in opening remarks in the Chamber on Friday.

Another key holdout was that Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul withdrew his demands for the defense bill on Friday, saying it only wanted one day. This allowed for an afternoon vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, which cleared the way for a temporary funding measure, also known as a continuous resolution.

The defense bill passed by a margin of 84 to 13 votes.

“Our main concern in filing the defense authority bill is that the president should have the exclusive right to end wars, rather than just start wars,” Paul told Capitol Hill.

Immediately, members of the legislature passed a policy resolution allowing a final vote on the defense bill. Trump threatened to veto the move, but a large majority in both chambers supported the plan.

With the House and Senate approving the defense bill with a veto-proof majority, Congress may have votes to override Trump’s veto.