President Biden signed a temporary spending bill on Thursday, September 26th, ensuring the operations of federal agencies until December 20th and ruling out the possibility of a government shutdown before the 2024 U.S. election.
The bill will provide funding for federal agencies until December 20th, maintaining the current levels. However, this also means that before the Christmas holiday at the year-end, members of Congress from both parties will face another deadline for a government shutdown.
After two assassination attempts on Republican presidential nominee Trump, Congress agreed to increase the funding for the Secret Service by $231 million. Additionally, funds for presidential transition were also increased.
On Wednesday, both chambers of Congress passed the bill. It passed with ease in the House by a vote of 341 to 82 and in the Senate by a vote of 78 to 18, with most of the opposition coming from Republicans.
Unlike previous versions, the temporary spending bill does not include provisions from the Secure America’s Voting Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires proof of citizenship when registering to vote.
Initially, House Speaker and Republican Mike Johnson hoped to pass a temporary budget lasting for six months that included the SAVE Act. However, during the House vote, 206 Democrats and 14 Republicans voted against this legislation.
Johnson stated that the temporary funding measure “only does what is absolutely necessary.” He said that at this stage, the only result of not passing this continuing resolution would be a government shutdown.
Currently, Congress is still far from completing the work on more than a dozen annual spending bills for the 2025 fiscal year, which would provide funding for the majority of the federal government.
The House has passed 5 out of 12 bills, most of which were approved along party lines. However, in the evenly-divided Senate, none of the funding bills have been passed so far.
After the passage of the temporary spending bill by both chambers on Wednesday, Biden stated in a release, “I want to thank both houses of Congress… thank them for coming to this bipartisan agreement, averting a costly government shutdown. The passage of this bill gives Congress more time to pass full-year appropriations bills before the end of this year.”