The Senate voted in the early hours of Saturday morning to pass a $1.2 trillion government funding bill, averting a government shutdown.
The Senate voted 74-24 to pass the “minibus” government spending bill. The bill passed through the House on Friday morning. As Breitbart News’s Bradley Jaye reported, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) violated the Hastert Rule in passing the government funding bill despite the objections of the majority of House Republicans.
The minibus spending package contained funding bills for the Departments of Defense (DOD), Labor (DOL), Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), and other parts of the federal government.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) lamented that it was “typical” and ” juvenile” for the Senate to wait until the last minute to avert a government shutdown.
NBC News reported:
The divided Congress has narrowly averted multiple shutdowns this session, passing four stopgap bills that kept extending the deadline. And at nearly six months into the fiscal year, it’s unusually late in the game to be haggling over the funding measures. The latest bill was released Thursday and passed by the House on Friday morning, leaving little time for the Senate to act.
For a while, those talks appeared to fall apart midday Friday, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., arguing the agreement was scuttled by vulnerable Democrats in key Senate races, claiming they don’t want to have to vote on amendments that could be used against them in their re-election campaigns.
“The bottom line is Democratic senators running for re-election are scared to vote on amendments,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said. The Senate voted 51-47 to block an amendment to add the Laken Riley Act to the funding bill.
As Breitbart News’s John Binder explained, the Laken Riley Act would “require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to take into custody illegal aliens arrested, charged, or convicted for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) wrote, “Senate Democrats are shutting down the government rather than allow us to vote on things like deporting criminal migrants. Say what you will, but they’re committed to open borders.”
Senate Democrats are shutting down the government rather than allow us to vote on things like deporting criminal migrants.
Say what you will, but they’re committed to open borders.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) March 23, 2024
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.