Trump signs US budget bill to end government shutdown

There was far less drama in the senate, where the measure sailed through by 71-28.

“When Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party”, Paul said during the debate.

The deal raises the debt ceiling until March 2019, postponing a potential fiery clash within President Donald Trump’s own Republican Party, and essentially clears the decks for Congress to address other thorny issues such as immigration and infrastructure. “The budget does move us towards a path of restoring fiscal responsibility”. Rand Paul holds up a vote on a bill to keep the government funded. That all changed when Paul grabbed the spotlight and began blasting the more than 600-page deal he bet no one had read, that would raise caps on spending this fiscal year and the next by about $300B.

Paul said the bill, which would set up a roughly $300 billion increase in the budget caps over two years, calls for borrowing and spending too much money. It also extends the debt ceiling, authorizes almost $90 billion more in aid for last year’s string of natural disasters, gives funding to fight the opioid crisis and extends the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program for an additional four years.

The Senate and the House were both expected to vote on the proposed deal on Thursday.

McConnell and Schumer said the deal was the product of extensive negotiations between both parties and the White House, which reacted positively to developments on Capitol Hill.

Leaders in the Senate had hoped the bipartisan package, which covers the remainder of this fiscal year and next, would end what has been a series of stopgap measures and shutdown threats, including the three-day disruption in January.

President Donald Trump intends to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program March 5.

Trump campaigned for the presidency on a promise to boost military spending and he gave his support to the budget deal in a tweet on Wednesday night.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made history this week with her 8 hour, 7 minute filibuster demanding a debate on DACA. “Leadership wants a budget deal, but we also want a commitment”.

The Senate and the House had given Thursday’s complete focus to the two-year budget deal to prevent the shutdown.

Activists have staged large-scale protests and sit-ins demanding Democrats take a stand on immigration, only to be disappointed when they fail to force a vote on immigration legislation. “That’s a commitment that I share”, Ryan told reporters.

Ryan said on Thursday he would bring an immigration bill to the floor that the president would sign.

During her floor time, Pelosi told the story of Chong, brought to the U.S.at age 6 from South Korea and a student at Rutgers Newark. As it now stands, the votes in the House for the budget agreement are not locked in, according to several sources working on the whip process.

This time around, the shutdown had little to do with immigration, at least at its outset.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., said Thursday on All Things Considered he also wouldn’t vote for the Senate bill, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also urged its members to oppose it. “I want people to feel uncomfortable” voting in favor of big deficits, he said.

The vote came hours after appropriations expired at midnight, shuttering agencies for the second time in three weeks after Sen.

“I’m confident there’s not going to be a government shutdown, and there shouldn’t be”, Collins said. “We love and need our Military and gave them everything – and more”, he said.

The Senate is just coming out of recess, to vote on the budget, which means the shutdown may only last a matter of hours. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters he was so exhausted he may need to skip watching Frasier.