The government won’t shut down Thursday night at midnight, as the Senate approved a stop-gap bill Thursday, 74-20. This continuing resolution will keep government operating until December 20 at midnight, provided a raging Donald Trump signs it. There’s no indication from the White House that he is considering vetoing it, and he’ll undoubtedly hear from Republican senators lunching with him Thursday that he needs to sign it.
The work could have been done Wednesday, since the House passed the bill on Tuesday, but procedural headaches had the Senate considering amending the bill and forcing the House to take it up again. Senate Republicans reportedly “worried that the vehicle, a fiscal 2020 package used by the House for the short-term spending measure, would complicate the path to a conference committee on the larger funding bills later this year.” But the imminent deadline of midnight Thursday for funding drying up, and the possibility that hours of floor time would be involved in changing it made them decide just to take the House bill as is.
That sets up the next funding battle. Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell say that they intend to have regular appropriations completed before this current continuing resolution expires before Christmas. The House has passed 10 of the 12 bills and the Senate has passed 4, but the chambers have not reached agreement on any of them. The largest sticking point in an overall agreement is the usual one: Trump’s border wall. The House has no funding for it. The Senate includes $5 billion in Homeland Security funding and allows Trump to reallocate an additional $3.6 billion from military funds.