US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with (L-R) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on February 27, 2024 at the White House in Washington, DC.
Roberto Schmidt | Getty Images
President Joe Biden signed the $1.2 trillion congressional spending package into law on Saturday, finalizing the remaining batch of legislation in a long-awaited budget to keep the government funded through Oct. 1.
Nearly halfway through the fiscal year, the president’s signature ends a months-long saga in which Congress struggled to secure a permanent budget resolution and instead passed stopgap measures, all but averting government shutdowns.
“The bipartisan funding bill I just signed keeps the government open, invests in the American people, and strengthens our economy and national security,” Biden said in a statement Saturday. “This agreement represents a compromise, meaning that neither party got everything they wanted.”
The weekend budget agreement came just under the wire before Friday’s funding deadline at midnight, as has been typical this fiscal year with 11th-hour disagreements derailing near-complete agreements.
The Senate passed the budget by a vote of 74-24 around 2 a.m. ET Saturday morning, technically two hours after the deadline due to last-minute disagreements. However, the White House said it would not initiate official shutdown operations as an agreement had ultimately been reached and only procedural actions remained.
The House passed its vote Friday morning after a week of trying to reconcile a lingering sticking point: funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which the White House took issue with last weekend. White House concerns further delayed the negotiation process, just as lawmakers prepared to release the legislative text of the budget proposal.
This trillion-dollar tranche of six appropriations bills will fund agencies related to defense, financial services, homeland security, healthcare, human services and more. Congress approved $459 billion in early March for the first six appropriations bills, which covered agencies that were less partisan and easier to negotiate.
With the government finally funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has cleared the plate of at least one looming issue.
But in doing so, he may have created another.
Hours before the House passed the spending package Friday morning, hardline House Republicans held a news conference to harshly criticize the bill. Moments after the House passed the bill, far-right Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a motion to oust Johnson.
If ousting a House Speaker over budget disagreements seems like a familiar story, that’s because it is.
In October, after former President Kevin McCarthy struck a deal with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown, the House voted to remove him, making him the first president in history to be removed from that position. Johnson sought to appease the hardline Republican wing of the House, called the Freedom Caucus, to avoid meeting a similar fate.