(The Hill) – The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to avert a government shutdown ahead of a Friday night deadline, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
Senators voted 65-27 on the bill, which funds the government through March 11 at current levels. It passed the House last week, and Biden is expected to sign it.
The bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), buys lawmakers roughly three more weeks to try to work out a mammoth deal that would fund the government through the end of September.
The Senate’s passage of the funding bill comes after a dayslong drama as senators tried to get a deal that would clear a path for the legislation. Because of the Senate’s rules, and the looming deadline, they needed buy-in from all 100 members to speed up the bill to meet the deadline.
Senators spent days haggling over what amendments would get votes. In the end, they agreed on three: Two related to Biden’s vaccine mandates and a third from Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) on balancing the budget.
Another amendment from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would block federal funding for schools and child care centers that require coronavirus vaccination failed, along with one from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other GOP senators to defund vaccine requirements for medical workers, military personnel, federal employees and contractors for the length of the CR.
Despite ultimately agreeing on what amendments would be included, the Senate was stuck in limbo for hours Thursday because of a basic problem: Math.
The chamber started the day with two GOP senators absent, Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), along with three Democratic senators: Sens. Ben Ray Lujan (Calif.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.).
That meant if the Senate had voted on the amendments Thursday, or even Wednesday when Graham was the only GOP senator missing, the vaccine proposals would have had enough support to get added into the government funding bill.
Any changes to the CR would force it back into the House, which is in the middle of a two-week recess and where Democrats would likely balk over quickly passing a bill that defunds Biden’s vaccine rules.
Cruz and Lee sought to take advantage of the Democratic absences, urging their colleagues to stay in town in order to win the votes on the vaccine amendments. Cruz said that “NO REPUBLICAN SENATOR should leave town this afternoon.”
“Schumer is panicking right now because Dems WILL LOSE THE VOTE on my amendment & @SenMikeLee amendment to BLOCK BIDEN’s VACCINE MANDATES & BLOCK MANDATES ON KIDS. The only way Dems win the vote is if Rs skip town,” he tweeted.
But GOP leadership indicated that they thought the logjam would eventually work itself out because enough Republican senators — eager to start their one-week break out of Washington, D.C. — would leave. In addition to Burr and Graham, GOP Sens. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Mitt Romney (Utah) missed the votes on the vaccine-mandate amendments.
Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Republican senator, predicted that the math for passing the CR without amendments would eventually work out because of “natural attrition.”
“There’s the Munich Security Conference and those folks are leaving later this afternoon. So, you know, at some point, it’ll ultimately resolve itself, if it isn’t resolved some other way,” he said.
Senators also negotiated for days over a bill from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to block federal funding from going toward crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia. Rubio warned that he would block quick passage of the CR unless there was a deal to get a vote on his bill.
The issue spun up last week out of reports from conservative media that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was providing pipes for smoking crack as part of a harm reduction program. The Biden administration has dismissed the report as incorrect, and the report has also been fact-checked by organizations including the Washington Post and The New York Times.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) had initially had a hold on the CR but dropped it earlier this week after she “received an answer in writing from the HHS Secretary committing that no taxpayer funding will be used to fund crack pipes.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) blocked quick passage of Rubio’s bill, arguing that it went further than crack pipes, which has gotten the bulk of the public focus.
But Rubio said Thursday that he wasn’t holding up the CR over his bill.
“This has nothing to do with a continuing resolution. The reason we’re not voting on the continuing resolution is there’s a lot of people who are not here,” Rubio said. “That’s why I took this opportunity to offer my bill.”
