The Senate of the United States voted mainly throughout the party lines 54-46 at the end of March 14 to approve a costs bill known as a continuous resolution, which will be financed by the federal government for the rest of its fiscal year ending on September 30. The bill includes $ 7 billion in expense cuts, including some programs that fund government construction projects.
The vote took place just hours before the midnight period to prevent a government stop after the last time the legislators passed a stop measure in December. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill.
The non -partisan committee for a responsible federal budget estimates that the bill establishes a total discretion of the base at $ 1.6 trillion. Reduces defense expenditure not to $ 13 billion, including $ 1.4 billion from the United States Army Engineers Corps and $ 2 billion of transport safety projects. But not in vain, the measure also increases the expense in defense by $ 6 billion.
“Mostly this is simple [continuing resolution] This simply continues the financing levels of the year 2024, “said Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriating Committee.
Republicans, with a majority of 53 seats in the Senate and only Senator Rand Paul (Ky.), Saying that he would vote against the costs bill, needed at least eight Democrats in support to advance the bill to a final vote before the term.
Nou Democrats, in addition to the Senator Angus King (I-Maine), joined them to vote to move forward.
The leader of the Minorities of the Senate, Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.), called the bill “very bad”, but said that he voted to advance it because the consequences of a stop would be worse.
“A stop would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk Carte Blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” Schumer said the day before voting. “Under a stop, Trump’s administration would have all authority to consider that whole agencies, programs and non -essential staff” cannot be promised that could not be readjusted. “
The vote took place days after the House approved the continuous resolution with the support of a single Democrat. In the Senate, the Democrats appeared divided before the vote. The legislators did not vote on a competing stop bill introduced by Senator Patty Murray (Wash.), Vice President of the Senate Appropriating Committee, which would have given the legislators another month to negotiate the terms of a costs bill to carry out the rest of the fiscal year.
Murray criticized the Bill of Republicans for not including headphones, congressional guidelines that are usually included in expenses invoices, and instead leave more control over spending on the Trump executive branch, rather than in Congress, at a time when he and his unclear adviser Elon Musk have already moved to quitting the congress and mandates of a thousand. of government employees.
“Instead of writing a bill that gives our communities what they need, they wrote a bill that turns many of our accounts into Slus’s funds and gives the final definition on what is obtained funding to two billionaires who do not know the first about the needs of our working families,” said Murray.
