House passes 45-day continuing resolution, sending bill to Senate hours before shutdown

In a last-ditch effort to keep the government funded, the House passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current spending levels for 45 days, advancing the legislation less than 10 hours before the government is set to shut down.

Lawmakers voted 335-91 on the continuing resolution, surpassing the two-thirds majority threshold needed to advance the legislation on suspension and send it to the Senate for consideration. Should it pass the upper chamber, it would then fall to President Joe Biden to make the final decision and sign it.

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More than 90 Republicans voted against the continuing resolution while nearly all Democrats voted to advance, giving it enough support to pass. Only one Democrat voted against the measure: Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL). The continuing resolution included all of President Joe Biden’s $16 billion supplemental request for disaster relief and funded the government for 45 days at fiscal year 2023 levels.

House Republican leaders unveiled the plan, which the Washington Examiner previously reported on, during a closed-door conference meeting on Saturday morning, offering up a 45-day stopgap measure that would maintain current government spending levels and include disaster funding without any Ukraine aid. Lawmakers offered the legislation to vote on suspension, meaning they needed at least two-thirds of the House to advance the bill in order for it to pass.

Democrats signaled opposition to the 71-page resolution moments before the vote was held, arguing the legislation was “dropped upon us at the 11th hour,” according to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“Our members are of the view that nothing that Republicans have said this year is trustworthy. Nothing,” he said. “So the notion that we’re supposed to go to the floor based on the Republicans’ word that this is a clean continuing resolution when they’ve lied every single step of the way.”

However, moments before the vote began, Democrats came out in favor of the deal, helping to push it across the finish line.

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GOP leaders sought to push the vote on the floor as quickly as possible on Saturday to get ahead of Senate Democrat plans to advance their own bipartisan plan in the upper chamber, which is slated for a vote later in the afternoon. That continuing resolution would fund the government at current fiscal levels and provide $6 billion in aid to Ukraine between funding between the Defense Department and the State Department. There is also nearly $6 billion in disaster relief.

Senate Republicans announced on Saturday afternoon they would no longer vote to advance the bipartisan CR, signaling the chamber will instead take up the House deal.