US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Senate Minority Leader (LR) Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), on February 27, 2024 at the White House in Washington, DC.
Robert Schmidt Getty Images
President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a $1.2 trillion congressional spending package, finalizing the remaining batch of bills in a long-awaited budget to keep the government funded until Oct. 1.
Nearly halfway through the fiscal year, the president’s signature ends a months-long saga Congress struggling to secure a permanent budget fix and instead passed stopgap measures, nearly averting a government shutdown.
“The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open, invests in the American people, and strengthens our economy and national security,” Biden said in a statement Saturday. “This agreement represents a compromise, meaning neither side got everything they wanted.”
The weekend budget deal collapsed just before midnight on Friday’s funding deadline, as has been typical this fiscal year with eleventh-hour disagreements derailing nearly completed deals.
The Senate approved the budget on a 74-24 vote at about 2 a.m. ET on Saturday morning, technically two hours past the deadline due to last-minute disputes. But the White House said it would not begin formal shutdown operations as a deal had finally been secured and only procedural steps remained.
The House took its own vote Friday morning after a week of trying to compromise on a sticking point: funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which the White House disagreed with last weekend. The White House’s misgivings further delayed the negotiation process as lawmakers prepared to release the legislative text of the budget proposal.
This trillion-dollar installment of the six appropriations bills will fund agencies related to defense, financial services, homeland security, health and human services, and others. Congress approved $459 billion in the first six appropriations bills earlier in March, which targeted less partisan and easier-to-negotiate agencies.
With the government finally funded for the rest of the fiscal year, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has cleared his plate of at least one looming issue.
But in doing so, he may have created another.
Hours before the House passed the spending package Friday morning, hardline House Republicans held a news conference to criticize the bill. Moments after the House narrowly passed the bill, far-right Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a motion to impeach Johnson.
If the removal of a House speaker over budget disagreements sounds like a familiar story, that’s because it is.
In October, after former President Kevin McCarthy struck a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, the House voted to remove him, making him the first president in history to be removed from office. Johnson is trying to appease the hard-line Republican wing of the House, called the Freedom Caucus, to avoid meeting a similar fate.