House Passes Two Week Spending Bill
Democrats preferred a 30-day spending bill, but Republicans rejected that idea.
The House passed a stopgap two-week spending bill with $4 billion in cuts Tuesday, sending the measure on for likely passage in the Senate as Congress tries to avert a partial shutdown of government.
The House voted 335-91 in favor of the measure. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it would pass "in the next 48 hours." The current stopgap bill expires on Friday.
The measure would keep the government running for two weeks to buy time for the Republican House, the Democratic Senate and the Obama White House to try to reach agreement on longer-term legislation to fund the government through the end of the budget year. It's a relatively mild volley in a party-defining spending battle that promises to go on for months or years.
Republicans want to slash a whopping $60 billion-plus from agency budgets over the coming months as a down payment on larger cuts later in the year, but are settling for just $4 billion in especially easy cuts as the price for the two-week stopgap bill.