(DailyDig.com) – On March 23, President Biden signed the 1.2 trillion-dollar spending package that passed in the Senate. The House received the bill early on March 21 and passed it by a vote of 286 to 134 that day. The Senate then passed the bill 74 to 24 in the early morning hours of March 23.
With the deadline to prevent a government shutdown approaching midnight on March 22, the White House announced that they had stopped any preparations for a shutdown as the Senate indicated that the passage of the bill was imminent. The bill was passed in the Senate, and the President signed it soon after 2 a.m.
Biden released a statement saying that the bill was a compromise and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans got all they wanted. He said it did have some good news for everyone, in that it rejected the extreme cuts in spending that the Republicans wanted. Cancer and Alzheimer’s research, child care, and mental health funding have all passed. Also funded are some border security resources and advancing leadership in foreign nations by the US.
The bill combines six bills for spending into this one in order to fund over half of government spending for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. Congress passed a bill earlier in March to fund the remainder of the government. The total of the two spending bills represents nearly 1.66 trillion dollars.
There are some programs that were not included in either bill for funding. Financing the nation’s debt, Medicare, and Social Security were not included. Also, other than defense spending, which included $300 million in aid to Ukraine, Biden’s statement argued that more assistance is necessary for both Ukraine and Israel.
The bill did include some wins for each side, as the Democrats worked for the inclusion of an extension of the current plan for AIDS relief worldwide, PEPFAR. Republicans received a ban on funding UN aid to the Palestine agency in Gaza.
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