US Senate passes stopgap bill to avert government shutdown

The Senate voted on Thursday to extend current federal spending and keep the government open, sending a short-term measure to the House that would avoid a shutdown and push off a final budget package until early March.

The House is scheduled to vote on the measure and send it to Joe Biden later in the day.

The stopgap bill, passed by the Senate on a 77-18 vote, comes after a bipartisan spending deal between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, this month and a subsequent agreement to extend current spending so the two chambers have enough time to pass individual spending bills.

The temporary measure will run to 1 March for some federal agencies whose approved funds were set to run out on Friday and extend the remainder of government operations to 8 March.

Johnson has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap the budget agreement with Schumer, and the bill to keep the government running will need Democratic support to pass the Republican-majority House. Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal as moderates in the party have urged him not to back out.

It would be the third time Congress has extended current spending as House Republicans have bitterly disagreed over budget levels and some on the right have demanded steeper cuts. The former House speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.

“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said on Tuesday about the decision to extend