The Republican-led House narrowly passed a six-month funding measure to avert a partial government shutdown.

The CR passed in a 217-213 vote.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the lone Republican to vote no, while Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) was the lone Democrat to support the measure.

NBC News reports:

The measure now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain. Republicans control 53 seats, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has made clear he’s firmly against it. That means at least eight Democratic senators would have to support the bill to cross the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and send it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The government is set to run out of money late Friday.

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Ahead of the vote, Senate Democrats criticized the partisan approach House Republicans took on the funding bill. But a significant number of them kept the door open to supporting it.

After an unusually long Senate Democratic lunch meeting Tuesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., declined to say whether he’d block the bill, a sign that his members lack consensus on the path forward.

“We’re going to wait and see what the House does first,” Schumer told reporters.

The legislation includes a slight increase in military spending and a moderate cut in domestic nondefense spending. It was crafted by GOP leaders, who took input from the White House and excluded Democrats from the process. House Democratic leaders strongly objected to the bill.

WATCH:

“The low down on this CR. It’s a fake fight here in the House that will become obvious when the Senate Democrats vote for this stinker,” Massie said.

WATCH:

From the Associated Press:

In the Senate, they’ll need support from at least eight Democrats to get the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk. It’s one of the biggest legislative tests so far of the Republican president’s second term, prompting Vice President JD Vance to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning to rally support.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., moved ahead on the bill, essentially daring Democrats to oppose it and risk a shutdown that would begin Saturday if lawmakers failed to act on the continuing resolution, often referred to by lawmakers as a CR.

“We did our job today,” Johnson said moments after the vote.

Johnson’s strategy had the backing of Trump, who called on Republicans to “remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right.”

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Lawmakers said the bill would trim $13 billion in non-defense spending from the levels in the 2024 budget year and increase defense spending by $6 billion, which are rather flat changes for both categories when compared with an overall topline of nearly $1.7 trillion in discretionary spending. The bill does not cover the majority of government spending, including Social Security and Medicare. Funding for those two programs is on autopilot and not regularly reviewed by Congress.

 

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