Senate votes to avoid a government shutdown: $460 billion package heads to President Joe Biden’s desk to fund six agencies and Congress has just two weeks before another spending deadline

The Senate passed a $460 billion spending bill, preparing President Joe Biden to sign the massive package into law to narrowly avoid a government shutdown.

After a long evening for lawmakers at the State of the Union, the Senate approved the funding package.

Now, the package will head to Joe Biden’s desk, where he is expected to sign it into law to keep the government’s lights on. If the bill had not passed, several federal agencies would have been left without money.

The agreement brought together funds for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under a single vote.

The bill passed the House 339-85 earlier this week, with 132 Republicans voting yes, 83 nays and all but two Democrats voting yes.

Details of the package were released Sunday night, giving lawmakers less than a week to prepare the more than 1,000-page document.

The spending plan only covers the first six government agencies, which have a funding deadline of Friday.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus and like-minded senators condemned the bill’s $12 billion and 605 pages of specific appropriations.

The appropriations issue came to a head Friday when the Senate Republican conference split over billions in additional spending.

“In 2010, the GOP rejected earmarks, the corrupting special interest currency long used to ‘buy’ votes in Congress for huge spending bills,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said exclusively to DailyMail.com in a statement on Friday.

“The minibus is full of them: a classic Washington spending spree that does nothing to solve the Democrats’ border crisis.”

“Republicans should not reward Joe Biden for his failure.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said earmarks are a vice for politicians. “These earmarks are, you know, like cocaine,” he said, adding that it’s as “addictive as cocaine” for politicians.

‘It’s disappointing that Republicans agree with Democrats on this spending bill,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., posted on X. “They agree with hundreds of assignments.’

“This is a real step backwards and I will oppose it with every fiber of my being.”

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., posted on X: ‘It’s not JUST the nearly 7,000 assignments for $13 billion, is that these pork spending projects are being used to buy votes for bad bills that are plunging us billions more into debt.’

“It’s embarrassing for any Republican to defend him.”

Many conservative members opposed the package because they did not consider it fiscally responsible enough amid a growing $34.5 trillion national debt.

Although President Mike Johnson – who choreographed this funding approach – has touted that the agreement involves “deep cuts” at the EPA (10%), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) (7%) and FBI (6%).

However, most of the FBI cuts come because Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, now retired, earmarked $600 million for a new FBI headquarters in Alabama last year.

Other policy provisions in the bill would provide additional funding to the FAA to oversee production of Boeing 737 Max aircraft – following several alarming safety incidents in recent months – while another would ban sales from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. United to China.

Amtrak, the long-beleaguered U.S. rail operator, would also get an additional $2.4 billion in financing.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he was “proud” of the product that will keep the “government open without cuts or poisonous provisions.”

A Democratic memo summarizing the bill touted how the measure rejected Republican policies that prohibited “the promotion or advancement of critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures.”

The new funding details came after Congress passed a fourth short-term funding bill late last week, just one day before the government’s funding deadline.

Another set of federal funding deadlines for the six remaining government agencies expires March 22, but Congress is expected to group those bills into one or two votes.

The remaining six bills that must be passed by March 22 are for the Departments of Defense, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education, State-Foreign Operations and the Legislative Branch.