 With just three hours to spare, Congress averted a government shutdown after agreeing on a bill to keep the government funded for another day. At breakneck speed, the Senate voted 88-9 Saturday night to approve a deal that was brokered earlier in the day by the House of Representatives. Nine Republicans voted against the bill in the upper chamber at 9.03pm local time, with President Joe Biden signing the agreement just before the 12.01am deadline. The measure will keep the money flowing until November 17. 'Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans,' Biden said in a statement. Addressing House Republicans who stalled the legislation, Biden added: 'We should never have been in this position in the first place.' Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Americans can now 'breathe a sigh of relief' (Picture: AFP) Congress has the power of the purse, with lawmakers passing a budget every year across 12 so-called appropriations bills. Except this didn't happen. This means a stopgap measure had to be passed to temporarily fund federal agencies or else scores of government employees would be furloughed and basic government functions frozen in place. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said: 'The American people can breathe a sigh of relief: there will be no government shutdown. 'After trying to take our government hostage, MAGA Republicans won nothing.' Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy announced the stopgap proposal Saturday morning. The measure includes billions of dollars for disaster recovery efforts and to keep the doors of the Federal Aviation Administration open. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy had been threatened with being housed by a bloc of hard-right Republicans (PictureL EPA) However, the b){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
With just three hours to spare, Congress averted a government shutdown after agreeing on a bill to keep the government funded for another day.
At breakneck speed, the Senate voted 88-9 Saturday night to approve a deal that was brokered earlier in the day by the House of Representatives.
Nine Republicans voted against the bill in the upper chamber at 9.03pm local time, with President Joe Biden signing the agreement just before the 12.01am deadline.
The measure will keep the money flowing until November 17.