By Moira Warburton
WASHINGTON The U.S. Senate will vote Wednesday on three bills laying out funding plans for agriculture, military and veterans affairs and transportation for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2024, Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
THE TAKE
Congress has until Nov. 17 to agree on funding to avert a partial government shutdown. The Senate and House of Representatives are taking sharply different approaches. The Senate is working on bipartisan bills while the Republican-controlled House is aiming for measures that will pass with only votes from the majority.
Ultimately the two chambers and parties will have to agree on a common approach that Democratic President Joe Biden will sign into law. With time short, lawmakers from both parties agree it is likely they will need to pass a stopgap measure known as a "continuing resolution."
KEY QUOTE
"Today we will pass the first three bipartisan appropriations bills," Schumer said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. "When these bills pass, they will be the only - I underscore, the only - bipartisan appropriations bills that have passed either chamber."
BY THE NUMBERS
Congress must pass 12 appropriations bills to fund the government through its fiscal year.
So far, the House has passed one appropriations bill, which due to its policy changes and spending cuts has no chance of passing the Senate or being signed into law by President Joe Biden.
THE CONTEXT
Congress narrowly averted a shutdown last month after the House passed a bipartisan continuing resolution, or CR, that led a small group of hardline Republicans to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
McCarthy's successor, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, is aiming to pass three 2024 spending bills with sharp spending cuts this week to placate party hardliners before turning to a CR, which he has said would extend through mid-January or mid-April.
The U.S. budget deficit last year hit $1.7 trillion, its highest outside of the COVID crisis, as rising interest rates pushed borrowing costs higher.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Rod Nickel)