Senate advances bill to avert US government shutdown

Obama must sign the bill by tomorrow night or many govt departments may have to shut shop

The Republican-led US Senate has easily advanced a crucial spending bill that averts a government shutdown, rebuffing far-right conservatives who have demanded a showdown over funding scandal-plagued abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Fiscal year 2016 begins Thursday and Congress must approve -- and President Barack Obama must sign -- legislation that funds federal operations before midnight on tomorrow night or many government departments close up shop.

The Senate measure, which advanced yesterday 77 votes to 19, does not defund Planned Parenthood as conservatives had demanded.

It goes to a final vote today or tomorrow. The House of Representatives will need to pass the same legislation for it to reach the president's desk.
 
But the bill known as a continuing resolution, which funds government operations at the previous year's level, is a stopgap that lasts only until December 11, and the fight has already shifted toward that next vote for conservatives to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funds.

Lawmakers will need to begin the haggling and bargaining process soon in order to avert another crisis barely 10 weeks down the track.

The vote on a so-called clean CR follows last week's defeat of a Senate measure that would have stripped funding from the women's health care provider, which has been mired in controversy since secretly recorded video surfaced showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of aborted fetal tissue for medical research.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it "the only viable way forward."

"It doesn't represent my first, second, third or 23rd choice when it comes to funding the government," he told colleagues.

"But it will keep the government open through the fall, and funded at the bipartisan level already agreed to by both parties as we work on the way forward."

Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid said he was glad that "fortunately cooler heads are prevailing."

But Senator Ted Cruz, the 2016 presidential candidate who is leading the far-right faction in the Planned Parenthood battle, slammed as "surrender" the Republican leadership's move to pass the clean CR.