WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a $1.2 trillion spending package, keeping the U.S. government funded through a fiscal year that began six months ago.Biden described the package, which Congress overwhelmingly passed in the early hours of Saturday, as investing in Americans as well as strengthening the economy and national security. The Democratic president urged Congress to pass other bills stuck in the legislative chambers.
"The House must pass the bipartisan national security supplemental to advance our national security interests," Biden said in a statement. "And Congress must pass the bipartisan border security agreement, the toughest and fairest reforms in decades, to ensure we have the policies and funding needed to secure the border. It's time to get this done."The Democratic-majority Senate passed the spending bill with a 74-24 vote. Key federal agencies including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury, which houses the Internal Revenue Service, will remain funded through September 30.
But the measure did not include funding for mostly military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, or Israel, which are included in a different Senate-passed bill that the Republican-led House of Representatives has ignored.The business community welcomed the passage of the spending bill and committed to continue working with policymakers to advance legislation that would enhance tax breaks for businesses and low-income families.
"A fully operational U.S. government provides important stability for American businesses, workers and families," Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten said in a statement. "We look forward to continuing to work with Members of Congress to advance sound policies, including the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act."
Senate leaders spent hours on Friday negotiating a number of amendments to the budget bill that ultimately were defeated. The delay pushed passage beyond a Friday midnight deadline.But the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying agencies would not be ordered to shut, expressing confidence the Senate would promptly pass the bill, which it did.
While Congress got the job done, deep partisan divides were on display again, as well as bitter disagreement within the House's narrow and fractious Republican majority. Conservative firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) threatened to force a vote to remove Speaker Mike Johnson (R-AL), a fellow Republican, for allowing the measure to pass.The 1,012-page bill provides $886 billion in funding for the Defense Department, including a raise for U.S. troops.
Johnson, as he has done more than 60 times since succeeding his ousted predecessor Kevin McCarthy in October, relied on a parliamentary maneuver on Friday to bypass hardliners within his own party, allowing the measure to pass by a 286-134 vote that had substantially more Democratic support than Republican.For most of the past six months, the government was funded with four short-term stopgap measures, a sign of the repeated brinkmanship that ratings agencies have warned could hurt the creditworthiness of a federal government that has nearly $34.6 trillion in debt.
"This legislation is truly a national security bill — 70 percent of the funding in this package is for our national defense, including investments that strengthen our military readiness and industrial base, provide pay and benefit increases for our brave servicemembers and support our closest allies," said Republican Senator Susan Collins, one of the main negotiators.
Opponents cast the bill as too expensive."It's reckless. It leads to inflation. It's a direct vote to steal your paycheck," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), part of a band of Republicans who generally oppose most spending bills.The last partial federal government shutdown occurred during Donald Trump's presidency, from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019. The record-long interruption in government services came as the Republican insisted on money to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and was unable to broker a deal with Democrats.
Greene Lashes Out
The new budget bill passed the House with 185 Democratic and 101 Republican votes, which led Greene, a hardline conservative, to introduce her measure to oust Johnson.That move had echoes of October, when a small band of hardliners engineered a vote that removed McCarthy for relying on Democrats to pass a stopgap measure to avert another partial government shutdown. They had been angry at McCarthy since June, when he agreed with Biden on the outlines of the fiscal 2024 spending that were passed on Friday.
McCarthy's ouster brought the House to a halt for three weeks as Republicans struggled to agree on a new leader, an experience many in the party said they did not want to repeat as the November election draws nearer.
And Greene said she would not push for an immediate vote on her move to force Johnson out.
"I filed a motion to vacate today. But it's more of a warning than a pink slip," the Georgia Republican told reporters on Friday.
Indeed, some Democrats said on Friday that they would vote to keep Johnson, if he were to call a vote on a $95 billion security assistance package already approved by the Senate for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.That measure is unlikely to come up anytime soon, as lawmakers will now leave Washington for a two-week break.
Pockets of Republican opposition to more funding for Ukraine have led to fears that Russia could seriously erode Kyiv's ability to continue defending itself.
Life is unlikely to become easier for Johnson anytime soon, with the looming departure of two members of his caucus -- Colorado's Ken Buck and Wisconsin's Mike Gallagher -- set to whittle his majority to a mere 217-213 in a month's time. At that point, Johnson could afford to lose only one vote from his party on any measure that Democrats unite to oppose.
Reporting by Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Makini Brice; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu. Andrea Shalal, Ismail Shakil and Lucia Mutikani; Editing by William Mallard, Andrea Ricci and Jonathan Oatis
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Far-Right Intelligentsia Struggles To Come To Terms With Norway Tragedy
It’s been less than 2 weeks since the tragic terrorist attacks in Norway carried out by anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik, and already far-right commentators have started justifying them. The most recent and egregious example is a blog post from Pamela Geller — the conservative commentator who started the false “Ground Zero mosque” rumor last year — which implies that Breivik was justified in murdering teenagers at summer camp because they were not white.
On Monday, Geller posted a picture of the summer campers murdered by Breivik, along with this caption: “Note the faces that are more Middle Eastern or mixed than pure Norwegian.” The rest of the post pointed out that the teenagers were interested in politics and members of a political youth organization, “Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking,” similar to the “College Republicans” and “College Democrats” organizations in the United States.
Geller later edited out the racist line, but retained the information about the campers’ politics. Geller’s insinuation that the teenagers were a legitimate target because they supported a political party she dislikes has been a common refrain on the far-right. Last Thursday, former Fox News host Glenn Beck compared the terrorist victims to “the Hitler youth,” since they were politically active.
Geller may be blaming the victims to distract from her links to Breivik. Reports have emerged that someone — possibly Breivik — left comments on Geller’s site saying he was “stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment.” Geller prominently featured these comments, while keeping their author’s identity anonymous. Breivik was certainly familiar with Geller’s site, and cited her approvingly numerous times in his manifesto.
Meanwhile, other ultra-conservatives took to the opinion pages to defend Breivik’s views. Bruce Bawer, the author of such Islamophobic books “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within” and “Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom” was also referenced approvingly in Breivik’s manifesto. After the attacks, he wrote a piece published in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal that seemed less concerned with the victims of Breivik’s rampage than with the damage it could do to Islamophobic movements in Europe. Bawer says that once he learned one of his fans — rather than Al Qaeda — committed the attacks, “it was immediately clear to me that his violence will deal a heavy blow to an urgent cause.”
That cause, of course, is religious discrimination against Muslims in Western Europe. Bawer admits that the attack by an anti-Muslim terrorist on a government he felt was not discriminating against Muslims enough has made him fearful — of the government. “It will, I fear, be a great deal more difficult to broach these issues now that this murderous madman has become the poster boy for the criticism of Islam,” he concludes.
Pat Buchanan, the former Republican presidential candidate best known for his Holocaust denial and hardline views on immigration, wrote an op-ed for the conservative website World News Daily. In the piece, Buchanan argues that “Breivik may be right.” Buchanan condemns Breivik’s violence, but argues that he was right to prepare for a religious war in Europe on the scale of the Crusades, “a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries.”
Buchanan also seems to approve of Breivik’s choice of targets, noting that he “chose as his targets not Muslims whose presence he detests, but the Labor Party leaders who let them into the country, and their children, the future leaders of that party.” Like Beck and Geller, he frames the campers killed in Utoya as dangerous political operatives, rather than innocent teenagers.