Congress postpones government shutdown, passes 2-week extension, $4 billion in cuts the price

[Hannah Bell]

The US Congress completed action Wednesday on a two-week extension of funding authorization, temporarily averting a shutdown of many federal government functions, set to begin Friday, March 4. The bill, which has been sent to the White House, includes $4 billion in domestic spending cuts, mainly in education and infrastructure programs, the price of support by the Republican-controlled House.

The bill passed the Senate by a 91-9 vote Wednesday with the backing of the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Four liberal Democrats and five conservative Republicans voted against the bill.

The day before, the House passed the same measure by a margin of 335 to 91. Only six House Republicans voted against the bill, because it contained no ban on implementing the Obama administration’s health care program, passed by Congress last year. Nearly half of the House Democrats, 85 in all, voted against the bill. The Democratic leadership was split, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi opposing the bill and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer supporting it.

House Republicans proposed the two-week extension to allow time for the House-Senate negotiations and forestall a federal government shutdown March 4. But the price they extracted was to begin implementing the $61 billion in cuts on a prorated basis—approximately $2 billion a week for the remainder of the fiscal year—by requiring $4 billion in cuts for the two-week extension. Senate Democratic leaders initially rejected this plan, only to reverse themselves abruptly February 25 after the Obama administration readily embraced it. The White House even proposed an expanded version, a one-month extension at the price of $8 billion in cuts, but the Republicans turned that down in order to set a tighter deadline for the negotiations.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/post-m03.shtml

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