In Congress’ last action of the year, the Senate passed a funding patch early Saturday with more than $110 billion in disaster aid, averting a government shutdown and closing out the 118th Congress.
Final passage of the bill, which made it through the House Friday evening, caps off a tumultuous week on Capitol Hill as Speaker Mike Johnson managed the last-minute demands of President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, along with the ensuing furor of congressional Democrats whose votes are needed to pass funding bills amid conservative opposition. While the speaker abandoned his initial bipartisan deal with Democrats at Trump’s and Musk’s urging, he failed to fulfill the president-elect’s demand for lifting the debt limit.
The end result is a spending patch that retains some of the initial bipartisan accord, including funding the government at current levels through March 14, more than $110 billion in disaster aid and a one-year farm bill extension of agriculture and food policy. But more than 1,000 pages of policy were ultimately nixed from the bill at Trump’s and Musk’s behest, including restrictions on U.S. investments in China, stricter rules on deceptive advertising of tickets for events and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers, aimed at lowering prescription drug prices for Americans.
