May 4 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate approved the House’s $1.1 trillion spending bill on Thursday, sending it on to President Donald Trump for his signature to avoid a government shutdown.
The upper chamber approved the measure by a vote of 79-18, with three senators abstaining.
The bill was passed Wednesday by the House, despite the stripping of several GOP efforts from the bill — including money to start building Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The bill allocated $1.5 billion for border security, but it cannot be used to build the wall.
The spending bill funds the government through September, when another measure must be passed — one that Republicans have said will be more aggressive in accomplishing some of the efforts that were removed from this bill.
The White House has said Trump will sign the bill before the deadline at midnight Friday.
Both parties hail the bill as a victory — Democrats because it strips GOP provisions and Republicans because they say it puts the government on track to “correct” eight years of Obama-era efforts.
“After years of an administration that failed to get serious on border security, this bill provides the largest border-security funding increase in a decade,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said.
Among other things, the bill increases defense spending by about $20 billion — a key position of Trump’s — as well as funds for NASA and the National Institutes of Health, which the president had wanted to cut. It also increases money for the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies.
No Democrat voted against the bill, but a handful of conservative Republicans did.
“There are things in this bill that I just don’t understand,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. “This is not ‘winning’ from the Republican point of view.”
Earlier this week, Trump threatened to shut down the government to keep some of the GOP provisions in the bill. After they were stripped, he threatened to shut down the government when the next funding bill comes in September if his party doesn’t get some of the things it wants — or perhaps change Senate rules to minimize the influence of Democrats in the upper chamber.
