Washington, United States:

The US Congress passed an 11th-hour funding bill Saturday to keep federal agencies running for another 45 days and avert a costly government shutdown — although the deal left out aid to war-torn Ukraine requested by President Joe Biden.

Three hours before the midnight Saturday deadline, the Senate voted to keep the lights on through mid-November with a resolution that had advanced earlier from the House of Representatives in a day of high-stakes brinkmanship on Capitol Hill.

The last-ditch “continuing resolution” was pitched by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as millions of public workers looked set to be sent home unpaid, upending government functions from military operations to food aid to federal policymaking.

Biden is set to sign the measure into law in the coming hours, with a White House official telling AFP the administration expects Republicans to allow a quick separate vote on Ukraine aid.

The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their own party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.

Saturday’s bill kept federal spending at current levels and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called the lower chamber’s vote “a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists.”

But the result could end up costing McCarthy his job. The 21 hardliners had threatened to remove him as speaker if a stopgap measure they opposed was passed with Democrat support.

One of the group, Lauren Boebert, declined to say after the House vote whether she and her colleagues would try to force McCarthy out, but she was clearly unhappy with the outcome.

“There are too many members here who are comfortable doing things the way they’ve been done since the mid ’90s,” she told reporters. “And that’s why we’re sitting at $33 trillion in debt.”

McCarthy sought to convey confidence both about his own future and the prospects for securing a final agreement within the new timeframe.

“In 45 days we should get our work all done,” he said, while seeming to offer a hand to the hardliners, saying, “I welcome those 21 back in.”  

While the crisis highlighted Republican divisions, Jeffries held his caucus together, with only one member defecting in a protest of the lack of assistance to Ukraine.

‘No blank check’

Arming and funding Kyiv in its desperate war against the Russian invasion has been a key policy plank for the Biden administration and, while the stopgap is temporary, it does raise questions over the political viability of renewing the multibillion-dollar flow of assistance.

“This is enough to keep the government open, and I’m not going to shut the government down over foreign aid,” one House Democrat, Jared Moskowitz, told CNN.

McCarthy said Russia’s invasion was “horrendous” but insisted there could be “no blank check” for Ukraine.

“I have a real concern of what’s going to happen long term, but I don’t want to waste any money,” he said.

With tensions running high and Democrats poring over the text of McCarthy’s proposal, one of their lawmakers, Jamaal Bowman, triggered a fire alarm in a building housing congressional offices an hour before the House vote.

Bowman’s spokesman insisted it was an accident, but Republicans accused him of seeking to delay proceedings.

If Congress had failed to keep the government open, the closures would have begun just after midnight (0400 GMT Sunday) and would likely have bled into the following week, delaying salaries for millions of federal employees and military personnel.

A shutdown would have meant the majority of national parks, for example — from the iconic Yosemite and Yellowstone in the west to Florida’s Everglades swamp — shutting to the public from Sunday.

The stopgap measure buys legislators time to negotiate full-year spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2024.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The House on Saturday swiftly approved a 45-day funding bill to keep federal agencies open as Speaker Kevin McCarthy dropped demands for steep spending cuts.
| Photo Credit: AP

On the brink of a federal government shutdown, the House on Saturday swiftly approved a 45-day funding bill to keep federal agencies open as Speaker Kevin McCarthy dropped demands for steep spending cuts and relied on Democratic votes for passage to send the package to the Senate.

The new approach would leave behind aid to Ukraine, a White House priority opposed by a growing number of GOP lawmakers, but the plan would increase federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, meeting President Joe Biden’s full request. The package was approved 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting. the bill.

With hours to go before the midnight deadline to fund the government, the Senate was also in for a rare weekend session and prepared to act next.

“We’re going to do our job,” Mr. McCarthy said before the House vote. “We’re going to be adults in the room. And we’re going to keep government open.”

With no deal in place before Sunday, federal workers will face furloughs, more than 2 million active-duty and reserve military troops will work without pay and programs and services that Americans rely on from coast to coast will begin to face shutdown disruptions.

The House measure would fund government at current 2023 levels for 45 days, through Nov. 17, moving closer to the bipartisan approach in the Senate. But the Senate package would have added $6 billion for Ukraine to fight the war against Russia and $6 billion for U.S. disaster relief.

Both chambers came to a standstill as lawmakers assessed their options, some decrying the loss of Ukraine aid.

“The American people deserve better,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, warning in a lengthy floor speech that “extreme” Republicans were risking shutdown.

For the House package to be approved, McCarthy, R-Calif., was forced to rely on Democrats because the speaker’s hard-right flank has said it will oppose any short-term measure, risking his job amid calls for his ouster. Republicans hold a 221-212 majority, with two vacancies.

After leaving his right-flank behind, Mr. McCarthy is almost certain to be facing a motion to try to remove from office, though it is not at all certain there would be enough votes to topple the speaker. Most Republicans backed the package Saturday while fewer than half opposed.

“If somebody wants to remove me because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” Mr. McCarthy said of the threat to oust him. “But I think this country is too important.”

The quick pivot comes after the collapse Friday of Mr. McCarthy’s earlier plan to pass a Republican-only bill with steep spending cuts up to 30% to most government agencies that the White House and Democrats rejected as too extreme.

“Our options are slipping away every minute,” said one senior Republican, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.

The federal government is heading straight into a shutdown that poses grave uncertainty for federal workers in states all across America and the people who depend on them — from troops to border control agents to office workers, scientists and others.

Families that rely on Head Start for children, food benefits and countless other programs large and small are confronting potential interruptions or outright closures. At the airports, Transportation Security Administration officers and air traffic controllers are expected to work without pay, but travellers could face delays in updating their U.S. passports or other travel documents.

An earlier McCarthy plan to keep the government open collapsed Friday due to opposition from a faction of 21 hard-right holdouts despite steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions.

The White House has brushed aside McCarthy’s overtures to meet with Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

Catering to his hard-right flank, Mr. McCarthy had returned to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.

After Friday’s vote, Mr. McCarthy’s chief Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, said the speaker’s bill “went down in flames as I’ve told you all week it would.”

Some of the Republican holdouts, including Mr. Gaetz, are allies of former President Donald Trump, who is Mr. Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 race. Mr. Trump has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to “shut it down.”

The US government is likely to go into a shutdown from this weekend as the Congress looks set to miss the Saturday deadline to fund federal agencies. The political logjam comes after the Republicans, who have a majority in the House of Representatives, demanded the Joe Biden-led government slash budgets and cut down funding for the Ukraine war.  

While the Senate, led by Democrats by a seat, tried to adopt a bipartisan approach to keep the government afloat, the Republicans were in no mood to concede ground until their demands were met. The shutdown will impact air travel, national parks and marriage licenses.

How Long Will The Shutdown Continue?

The US federal budget starts on October 1. So the shutdown comes into effect at 12:01 am on October 1 if Congress fails to pass a funding plan that the President signs into law. Nobody can predict how long the shutdown will last.

The Senate, controlled by Democrats, and the House, controlled by Republicans, are working on different plans to avoid the shutdown. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy, despite trying everything, is struggling to get the hard-right conservatives’ support to keep the government open.

What It Means For Federal Agencies’ Staff

If the Congress misses the Saturday night deadline, millions of federal employees risk being furloughed. Not just that, many others will have no other option but to work without pay until the shutdown ends. In the last decade or so, this is the fourth time Congress has failed to keep the government open. 

According to a report, the federal government’s roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, won’t receive paychecks during a shutdown.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme

Millions of low-income Americans’ access to food and nutrition assistance programs is in jeopardy due to the shutdown. The scale of the impact will depend on the duration of the shutdown and programme-by-programme contingency funds.

Besides that, about 7 million women and children, currently relying on SNAP for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), also risk losing the assistance as soon as the shutdown comes into effect, the Biden administration has said. That’s because the contingency fund for the WIC programmes will likely run out in days.

Will Flights, Travel Be Hit? 

The shutdown is unlikely to affect the US air travel network. Air traffic controllers and TSA screeners, despite being essential workers, won’t be paid until the shutdown ends.

On Wednesday, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that air travel will remain safe in a shutdown, but that the training of new air traffic controllers will stop and 1,000 trainees will be furloughed.

As far as the processing of passports and visas is concerned, it will continue even during the shutdown but only “as the situation permits.” The State Department said consulates in the US and abroad will stay open “as long as there are sufficient fees to support operations.” However, the passport work will stop if the building where the work is done is shuttered.

Will Shutdown Disrupt Student Loans?

Loan servicers will be able to continue to process payments regularly. However, those in need of consultation or help from the Education Department may expect delays due to the potential of agency furloughs.

Similar delays are also expected for students applying for federal aid during a shutdown.

Washington:

The United States is less than two weeks away from a potential government shutdown, with the stakes increasing as lawmakers struggle to agree on a short-term spending bill.

Several budget bills are currently being discussed in Washington, but none have enough votes to clear both the Democrat-majority Senate and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Lawmakers have until midnight on September 30 to reach an agreement, before funding for government services is due to dry up.

Government shutdowns put at risk the finances of hundreds of thousands of workers who may be sent home without pay as parks, museums and other federal properties close.

Although policymakers are generally keen to avoid this situation, some supporters aligned with former president Donald Trump have so far opposed every bill on the table.

“With less than two weeks before the end of the fiscal year, extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with peoples’ lives,” said the White House in a statement on Tuesday.

– Ukraine aid uncertain –

The impasse could have repercussions on the war in Ukraine, with the White House seeking for any budget bill passed by lawmakers to include $24 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Kyiv.

While such a plan is supported by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, it is radically opposed by some members of the House.

“I will not vote to fund a single penny to the war in Ukraine, COVID anything, and the political weaponized government,” said far-right Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

This comes as US President Joe Biden is due to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington later in the week.

“At the very same time that President Zelensky comes to the United States to make the case for standing firm against (Russian President Vladimir Putin), Republican leadership in the House of Representatives are essentially telling him ‘You’re on your own’,” said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

– Debt crisis in June –

The looming shutdown marks the second time in recent months that the world’s top economy faces a financial gridlock.

In June, the United States narrowly avoided a possible debt default, as US senators voted to suspend the federal debt limit after weeks of fraught negotiations.

A default would have been unprecedented, but the United States has had periods of shutdown before, including a 35-day stretch from late 2018 to early 2019 under former president Donald Trump — the longest in US history.

A shutdown this time could “leave a visible mark on the economy,” said EY chief economist Gregory Daco this week.

He estimates that “each week of government shutdown will cost the US economy $6 billion,” and trim GDP growth by 0.1 percentage points in the fourth quarter.

“Apart from the direct macroeconomic consequences of a shutdown, financial markets and private sector confidence could also be affected,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)