1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites
Live TV
Latest audioLatest videos
In focus
Israel-Hamas warUkraineExtreme weather
PoliticsUnited States of America

US Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown

December 3, 2021

The bill will now go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. It means the government can avoid a shutdown, with funding secured to keep federal agencies running until mid-February.

https://p.dw.com/p/43lpB
Night-time view of the US Capitol in Washington
The US Senate has passed a bill to avert a government shutdownImage: J. Scott Applewhite/AP/picture alliance

A bill to fund the United States government through mid-February has been approved in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Senators voted 69-28 to pass the measure. It will next go to US President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.

The bill's passage prevents a shutdown of federal agencies at the end of this week.

"I am glad that, in the end, cooler heads prevailed — the government will stay open," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

The Senate vote was held just hours after the House of Representatives approved the measure.

Standoff over vaccine mandate

The resolution was expected to get stalled in the Senate, where a group of hardline members of the opposition Republican Party threatened to tank the measure in protest of rules related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Democrats agreed to allow a straight majority vote on defunding for a Biden edict that required vaccination or weekly tests for some sections of the US workforce, which the right-wing Republican group argued is an assault on personal liberty. The vote failed, however, and the mandates remain in place.

Utah Senator Mike Lee, leader of the minority group of Republicans, said that citizens' "jobs are being threatened by their own government," referring to mandated vaccination or testing for workers in larger businesses.

Entrance to a vaccination center in the Columbus, Ohio, United States
Senator Mike Lee and other conservative Republicans say vaccine mandates threaten jobsImage: Stephen Zenner/ZUMAPRESS/picture alliance

The majority of Senate Republicans supported the resolution, fearing that they would be blamed for a shutdown of federal agencies.

This week, a court ruling blocked the mandate from being enforced for some health care workers, and on November 6 a federal court issued a stay on the mandate.

What are the implications of the bill?

The vote means the government will not have to shut down. A standstill may have forced government medical staff and research personnel to be laid off at a time when the country is trying to prevent the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant.

The longest shutdown in history happened under former President Donald Trump. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over those 35 days in  2018-19, the government shutdown wiped $11 billion (€9.7 billion) from the US economy.

US Treasury building in Washington
The stopgap measure allows legislators to negotiate full-year spending billsImage: Patrick Semansky/AP/picture alliance

The bill will keep the government running for 11 more weeks at current spending levels, with an extra $7 billion for Afghanistan evacuees. This stopgap measure buys legislators time to negotiate full-year spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2022.

Now that the shutdown is off the table, Democrats can now focus on passing a $1.8 trillion social welfare and climate spending plan which is central to Biden's legacy. The plan is threatened by feuding between centrist and progressive factions of the Democratic Party.

sdi/nm (Reuters, AFP, AP)