The Senate on Friday evening passed a deal to fund federal agencies and give lawmakers more time to work out disputes over the Department of Homeland Security.
The package of five bills, plus a two-week stopgap measure for the DHS funding, passed 71-29.
The deal’s passage in the upper chamber of Congress will not prevent a partial government shutdown from beginning a few hours later.
That’s because the House of Representatives, which also must vote to approve the final version of the deal, isn’t scheduled to return to Washington until Monday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said on a House GOP conference call earlier Friday afternoon that he will back the Senate-passed funding deal in light of President Donald Trump’s support for it, MS NOW reported.
Johnson said he hopes the House will pass the bill Monday, according to MS NOW. Once it is approved by the House, the spending package will be sent to Trump to sign.
In the meantime, a partial shutdown of federal operations is set to begin at 12:01 a.m. ET Saturday.
The agreement stripped out funding for the Department of Homeland Security and included five other bills to appropriate money for government agencies.
The deal called for DHS, which has been the target of scathing criticism by Democrats over its aggressive immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota, to be temporarily funded by a stopgap measure, with the question of long-term funding to be revisited later.
The deal had stalled in the Senate as a few Republican holdouts kept lawmakers from quickly considering the package.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham earlier Friday refused to lift the hold he placed on the measure unless he was “guaranteed a vote” on his bill to criminalize so-called sanctuary city policies.
Graham wanted to impose criminal penalties on state and local officials “who willfully interfere with the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
He also wanted an amendment to address the so-called Arctic Frost investigation by then-special counsel Jack Smith. That amendment would have required officials to notify senators if their phone records are obtained in a criminal investigation.
The House last week included language in the spending package to repeal a law that would have allowed senators to sue for up to $500,000 if their phone records were obtained during Arctic Frost. Graham criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for the move.