U.S. Congress passes stopgap spending measure to dodge Friday shutdown threat

The House and the Senate have both approved a stopgap spending bill to fund the government through early March. The bill now heads to President Biden's desk for a signature.

With some federal agencies, including those that oversee agriculture, transportation and veterans' services, set to run out of funding Friday night at midnight and a winter storm toward the nation's capitol, lawmakers were under pressure to finish their work and leave town. The new spending measure maintains a two-tier structure where some agencies would run out of money on March 1 and others would remain funded through March 8.

The measure is the latest in a series of short-term measures meant to buy lawmakers time to do the more arduous work of drafting and advancing the full suite of 12 annual government spending bills, which have so far been waylaid in large part because of internal disagreements among the wafer-thin House Republican majority.

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https://www.npr.org/2024/01/18/1225369336/congress-races-against-the-clock-and-the-weather-to-fund-the-government