Biden signs spending bill, finalizing end to shutdown drama
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed the spending package that allowed federal funds to keep flowing until mid-March, formally ending the week’s unexpected drama over the issue a few hours after the deadline for a shutdown had technically passed.
Biden’s signature came after the Senate passed the legislation early Saturday, after a bipartisan vote in the House on Friday evening. The bill, which maintains the current level of government funding and also provides $100 billion in disaster relief for regions still recovering from storms and $10 billion in direct aid for farmers, punted the spending deadline to the early months of the Trump administration, when Republicans will control both chambers of Congress.
“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted,” Biden said in a statement released after he signed the bill. “But it rejects the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires that Republicans sought, and it ensures the government can continue to operate at full capacity.” Biden had been all but absent from the chaotic spending negotiations that gripped Washington for several days as the shutdown deadline loomed. (In a statement earlier in the week, Karine Jean-Pierre, the WH press secretary, accused President-elect Donald Trump of ordering a shutdown and said: “A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.”) Two earlier versions of the bill that Biden signed had failed to make it to his desk. The first, a sprawling package attacked relentlessly Wednesday by Elon Musk on social media and eventually by Trump, didn’t even make it to the House floor for a vote. A more stripped-down version carrying a suspension of the debt limit, which Trump had demanded, failed to pass the House amid a rebellion by three dozen fiscally conservative Republicans, who joined nearly all Democrats in voting it down Thursday night.
The spending fight demonstrated the limited grip that Trump has on the right-wing faction of the Republican Party that is adamantly opposed to taking on more debt.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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