Dem
51
GOP
49
It's Christmas this weekend, and the members of Congress want to get the hell out of Dodge. Well, D.C. And so, after a marathon bargaining and bickering session, the Senate has passed a $1.7 trillion government spending bill that will fund the government into next year. None of the Senators have actually read the full bill, which runs over 4,000 pages. Oh, well. You can't have everything, right?
Here are some of the more notable things that made it into the final bill:
On the other hand, Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-WV) pet project, an overhaul of permitting rules, didn't make it. Nor did an extension of the enhanced Child Tax Credit, an additional $9 billion in COVID relief, or a provision that would have allowed banks to do business with marijuana dispensaries.
The biggest exclusion, however, is one that was apparently never even on the table: an increase in the United States' debt limit. Maybe Senate Republicans want this fight, since they do have to have some high-profile way to signal to the base that they are "fiscal conservatives." Or maybe Senate Democrats do, since they know that House Republicans are likely to end up the losers in this game of chicken. Whatever the case may be, the debt limit will be reached in late spring or early summer of next year, and then the Treasury will run out of bookkeeping tricks in July or August. So, get ready for some summer... fun.
The vote on the bill was 68-29. In case you are interested, here are the 18 Republicans who joined with the 47 Democrats and 3 independents in voting "yea":
These folks are now apparently in the doghouse with some of their colleagues in the House (see below).
The bill heads to the House today, where it will surely be passed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wants to get out of town as much as anyone, and she certainly doesn't want the last thing she does as speaker to be shutting down the federal government at Christmas. So, this particular crisis would seem to have been averted, but again, the next one is just 5-6 months away. (Z)