The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly voted to extend federal funding through Dec. 11, while punting the threat of a government shutdown until after the presidential election.
The bipartisan vote comes hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin clinched a last-minute deal to include billions in nutrition assistance and trade relief payments for farmers, capping weeks of contentious negotiations.
The short-term funding fix now goes to the Senate, where it’s expected to easily pass before the Sept. 30 deadline. If signed by President Donald Trump, it would also postpone a slew of contentious funding fights — from the border wall to the renaming of Confederate monuments at military installations — to the lame-duck session of Congress.
“We have an agreement that will keep the government functioning for the people,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on the floor, recapping the back-and-forth of negotiations in recent weeks. “There was a lot of to and fro-ing, a lot of people wanted this, a lot of people wanted that, a lot of people didn’t want this… This is the best we have, so we need to take it.”
The bipartisan accord represents a remarkable turnaround after negotiations collapsed late last week after Democrats objected to the GOP’s demands for trade relief payments, prompting some lawmakers and aides to privately worry that Washington was coming perilously close to the Sept. 30 deadline with no agreement to keep the government open.