US: Senate approves spending bill, averting shutdown

By Safvan Allahverdi

WASHINGTON

U.S. Senate on late Thursday passed a temporary funding bill to prevent a government shutdown after the House of Representatives also approved the bill.

The stopgap spending bill to fund the government through Jan. 19 passed the Senate by and advanced to President Donald Trump's desk to sign into law.

Trump is expected to sign the bill Friday before leaving Washington, D.C. for West Palm Beach and his holiday vacation at Mar-a-Lago, according to White House officials.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives earlier on the same day approved the legislation and it passed 231-188.

The spending bill, also known as the Continuing Resolution (CR) bill is a package that contains smaller regular appropriations bills which could be passed with only one vote in each house.

It includes $2.85 billion for the popular Children's Health Insurance Program and $750 million for diabetes programs and community health centers.

"We're just bringing a clean -- what we call vanilla – CR. No games, no sneaky things. Just a continuing resolution to get us through this moment to get us into next year," House Speaker Paul Ryan told U.S. media.

"It's as clean and simple as possible."

There are 12 different regular appropriations bills that need to be passed each year to fund federal departments and avoid a shutdown.

President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for blocking talks on the bill with demands related to an immigration issue and distracting Americans from the tax reform legislation that Republicans just passed.

Some senior Democrats said they would vote against a spending bill if Congress does not address nearly 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who may lose their ability to live and work in the U.S. due to Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September.

DACA was an American immigration policy that allowed some individuals who illegally entered the country as children to live and be employed with a special work permit.

But the White House repeatedly said it does not want the immigration plan sought by Democrats to be included in any spending bill.

The last government shutdown lasted two weeks in 2013 and cost the U.S. billions of dollars a day.