The U.S. Senate passed a bill Thursday that avoids a congressional shutdown and secures a $1.7 trillion budget before a new makeup of the Republican-majority House of Representatives is inaugurated.
The Upper House has given the ‘green light’ to the general spending package with 68 votes in favor against 29 votes against, after which it will have to pass through the House of Representatives before Friday at midnight and be signed by U.S. President Joe Biden, as reported by NBC News.
In the United States, the government shuts down when one or both houses of Parliament cannot resolve disagreements over budget appropriations before the end of the existing budget cycle.
The measure, which also includes nearly $45 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, secures the federal budget for 2023, with funding for major U.S. agencies.
The bill has made it through after the GOP introduced a last-minute amendment Wednesday on Title 42, a controversial health order by former President Donald Trump that allowed authorities to immediately remove migrants from U.S. borders.
After that, the independent Krysten Sinema, representative for Arizona, and the Democrat Jon Tester, for Montana, have presented another amendment, although both texts have been finally rejected by the House, as reported by CNN.
The bill, with more than 4,000 pages, also includes a revision to the electoral law in an attempt to avoid another scenario similar to the one experienced in the assault on the Capitol on January 6 by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
The package also allocates $475 million to help train and equip the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and northeastern Syria, as reported by ‘The New York Times’.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
