Lawmakers Approve Stopgap Spending Bill To Avoid Government Shutdown

The Senate passed the short-term funding extension Thursday as lawmakers continue to negotiate over expiring tax breaks, gun control research and funding for 9/11 responder healthcare.

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Friday on stop-gap spending legislation to extend a deadline for action and avoid a government shutdown, a House leadership aide said.

With days to go before a possible government shutdown, House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat down Friday night for a more than two-hour dinner in the speaker’s office at the Capitol, a source familiar with their discussions told CNN.

Democrats hold some leverage, despite controlling the smallest House minority since the late 1920s, because many Republicans are expected to vote against a spending bill they believe is too expensive. Even as the House prepared to follow the Senate’s lead and extend that deadline through Wednesday Dec. 16, Ryan allowed that even more time might be needed. The upper chamber overwhelmingly passed the measure Thursday.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress are working toward passing a year-long spending bill.

“Not every piece of legislation we’re going to agree on every part of it. But i think the underlying legislation we present today is a product of bipartisan cooperation and compromise and give and take”, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said Friday. He said sticking points relate to labor and environmental issues, and to a campaign finance provision pushed by his Republican counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to lift certain spending limits by party committees.

At the same time, the No. 2 in the House of Representatives, California Republican Kevin McCarthy, said that lawmakers will not be in session until December 15, as was planned before the extension of the negotiations was agreed upon. But the two sides have been unable to reach a final agreement due a dispute over contentious policy riders. She contended Democrats proposed just a few, “and ours were very reasonable”. “Don’t expect us to vote for a bill that has a ban in it. Take the ban out”.