Senate passes short-term bill to avert government shutdown

(Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

The Senate on Thursday evening passed a short-term funding bill, averting a government shutdown.

Government funding was set to run out at midnight Friday, and this bill will keep things running until March 11. Lawmakers are hoping by that point, negotiators will have finalized agreements for a package of funding bills to last through September.

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To quickly pass the stopgap funding bill, Democrats went along with Republican requests to hold three amendment votes. The amendments — one to keep the Biden administration from enforcing vaccine mandates for federal workers and the military; another to stop giving federal money to schools and child care centers that require kids to receive COVID-19 vaccinations; and a third that would make it harder for Congress to raise taxes — were all rejected.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.