New spending bill to avert government shutdown passes House

A last-ditch effort to temporarily fund the government and avert a shutdown passed the House on Friday, a sigh of release for millions of federal workers whose paychecks were thrust into uncertainty during the holidays.

The funding bill passed by a vote of 366-34. A two-thirds vote was needed in the House to avert a shutdown. The legislation now heads to the Senate, which has until midnight to pass the bill.

The latest attempt at a funding bill comes after lawmakers scrambled to update the spending bill this week following House Republicans' failure to pass a Donald Trump-backed bill on Thursday. Capitol Hill was sent into chaos weeks before he's set to take office. Thirty-eight House Republicans voted that proposal down.

That followed a dramatic series of events Wednesday when Trump and close ally Elon Musk helped kill the GOP’s first attempt at a funding bill, which would've funded the government through mid-March. Trump, Musk and other MAGA allies scorched the deal and laid the blame squarely at House Speaker Mike Johnson's feet.

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Johnson was determined Friday to see a bill through and avoid a shutdown.

“We will not have a government shutdown,” Johnson said, according to The Washington Post.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) told reporters Friday that what brought the House scrambling to assemble a last-minute spending bill hours before a government shutdown was Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden.

“Luckily, those times are changing,” he told Raw Story. “Come January we’re going to have a Republican majority in the House, as narrow as it might be, but we’re going to have a Republican Senate and President Trump back in the White House.

He added that incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) “wants to take the appropriations process seriously so we don’t have all these midnight hour showdowns that the country is tired of.”

The Office of Management and Budget had put federal agencies on notice Friday morning to make preparations for an imminent government shutdown.