It took just five minutes for the House to pass a bill Thursday that will keep the federal government’s basic operations running for the first four days of October, at a rate of nearly $3 billion a day.
The chamber was nearly empty when Rep. John A. Culberson, a Texas Republican, asked for unanimous consent to pass the stopgap bill, which averts a government shutdown that otherwise would have begun Saturday, the start of the next fiscal year.
Thursday’s action was a quiet ending to the last two weeks’ worth of heated debate in Washington, where both sides had appeared headed for a stalemate over extra disaster relief funding to cover hurricane, tornado, earthquake and flood damage. Republicans had insisted the extra funding for 2011 be matched with cuts elsewhere, while Democrats said natural disaster money has always been tacked onto the deficit.
But when federal officials announced Monday they had discovered enough money to last through the end of the week, it erased the point of contention, and paved the way for an agreement that passed the Senate 79-12 earlier this week, and then cleared the House without objection on Thursday.
“It took too long to get it done, but at the end of the day, it’s taken care of,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who came to the chamber to watch the brief proceedings.
The stopgap bill will last just four days into October — long enough for the House to return from its vacation this week and vote on another, broader bill that would fund the government through Nov. 18.
Thursday’s bill now goes to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.
But Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said the president is frustrated with the way Washington politics works. Mr. Carney questioned why there had been a threat of a shutdown when all sides had already agreed to the overall funding level for 2012 when they reached the debt deal early last month.
Conservative Republicans did indeed balk at that level of funding, which calls for $1.043 trillion in discretionary spending in 2012. Discretionary spending covers basic functions of the government such as defense, housing and the environment, as opposed to formula-driven entitlements, which are automatically funded each year.
Conservatives had argued the House should stick to the lower 2012 spending level the House passed in its budget in the spring. But Republican leaders in the House said they made a deal on the debt limit and must stick with it. The 2012 rate of discretionary spending is several billion dollars lower than in 2011.
Still, the bigger sticking point over the last two weeks has been the emergency funding.
Senate Democrats pushed through a bill that would have tacked $7 billion onto projected deficits in 2011 and 2012. House Republicans offset $1 billion of spending in 2011 with cuts to a clean-energy program, and built another $2.65 billion in emergency spending into the government-wide 2012 spending level they’d already agreed to.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, called it a “Republican-manufactured shutdown crisis.”
“We stood firm against Republican efforts to balance the budget on the backs of those hit by natural hurricanes, floods and earthquakes disasters by destroying good-paying American jobs,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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