Olusegun Ariyo
US President, Joe Biden, on Saturday, signed a funding bill preventing a Christmastime government shutdown after negotiations in Congress went down to the wire overnight.
Incoming president Donald Trump, who pressured Republicans to abandon an earlier bipartisan funding compromise, sparked last-minute lawmakers’ arguments.
The legislators then spent several days trying to hammer out another deal, with massive halts to government services hanging in the balance.
With the Friday midnight deadline approaching, senators abandoned normal procedure to fast-track the new package to a vote, funding the government until mid-March.
Biden, in a statement, said the agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted.
The Democrats dominate the Senate, so there was no doubt that the new funding package would get a rubber stamp after the party was crucial in helping the Republican majority in the House pass the bill earlier in the day on Friday.
However, with senators often dragging their feet over complex legislation, there were fears that the funding fight might spill into next week.
That would have meant non-essential operations winding up, with up to 875,000 workers furloughed and as many as 1.4 million more required to work without pay.
President-elect, Donald Trump and tech billionaire, Elon Musk, his incoming efficiency czar, created much of the drama this time around by pressuring Republicans in an 11th-hour intervention to renege on a funding bill they had painstakingly agreed with Democrats.
Two subsequent efforts to find compromise fell short, leaving Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson at the last chance saloon as he spent much of Friday huddling with aides to find a way to keep government agencies running.
If the funding bill had failed, non-essential government functions would have been put on ice.
