Spending Bill Passes House and Heads to Senate as Deadline to Avoid Shutdown Looms

Screenshot via CNN.

The House has passed a 45-day stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) needing Democrat votes to get the bill through to send to the Senate.

The 71-page bill continues government spending at current levels for 45 days, plus additional funding for the FAA and $16 billion in disaster relief funding, in response to a request from President Joe Biden’s administration.

As Saturday’s shutdown deadline has loomed, McCarthy has faced staunch opposition from hardliners in his own party, including Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) ongoing threats to seek his ouster from the speakership. The Speaker had one stopgap bill fail on Friday because he couldn’t win enough Republican votes, and this latest stopgap bill was put forward with an expedited process, meaning it required a two-thirds vote to pass — increasing the pressure on McCarthy.

Democrats complained about the “rushed” timeline to read the new bill and the lack of funding for Ukraine, but in the end, enough of the members from the left side of the aisle voted to support it.

The final vote was 335 to 91, with Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) being the sole Democrat to vote no, according to CNN. A total of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans voted for the bill, and 90 Republicans against it.

Members of Congress from both parties cheered as the gavel came down, officially certifying the bill had passed.

At time of publication, fewer than nine hours remain to avoid a shutdown. The bill is now headed to the Senate.

As CNN’s Lauren Fox noted, the passage of this bill in the House was just “the warm-up” to the “much larger fight ahead on how to fund the government for the next fiscal year, and that is where things are going to get very, very dicey for both McCarthy and Democrats.”

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

Watch above via CNN.