Last-gasp moves to prevent a US government shutdown became legislation late on Saturday, when President Joe Biden signed the bill to extend government for 45 days.
Democrats overwhelmingly backed an eleventh-hour Republican measure to keep federal funding going, which comes with a freeze on Washington’s aid to Ukraine.
The stopgap measure, adopted 335-91 by the House of Representatives, was pitched by Speaker Kevin McCarthy with just hours to go before a midnight shutdown deadline that would have seen millions of federal employees and military personnel sent home or required to work without pay.
Ninety of the votes against the measure came from Republicans.
The shutdown crisis was largely triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who had defied their party leadership to scupper various temporary funding proposals as they pressed for deep spending cuts.
Saturday’s agreement could end up costing Mr McCarthy his job, as the hardliners had threatened to remove him as Speaker if a measure they opposed was passed with Democrat support.
Mr McCarthy had appealed to both Republicans and Democrats to “put your partisanship away” and dismissed the threat to his job.
Source : The National