US Senate Passes Stopgap Funding Bill, Avoids Govt Shutdown Till Mid-February

Republican senators had threatened to block the funding bill in protest against Biden's vaccine mandates.

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The United States Senate passed a funding bill that will avoid a government shutdown until mid-February, Reuters reported on Thursday, 2 December.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that he was "glad that in the end, cooler heads prevailed."

"The government will stay open and I thank the members of this chamber for walking us back from the brink from an avoidable, needless and costly shutdown", he said, reported Reuters.

The vote ended up being 69 in favour and 28 against which ensured the passing of the stopgap spending plan before midnight deadline on Friday, 3 December.

The Senate voted for the stopgap spending plan immediately after the House of Representatives passed the same by a vote of 221-212, The Guardian reported.

Only one GOP member in the House supported the plan.

The vote came after some Republican senators threatened to block the funding bill in protest against Joe Biden's vaccine mandates. Republican senators voted on an amendment to defund the mandate but that vote failed.

The Biden administration introduced mandates in July earlier this year, which required federal employees either get fully jabbed or get tested every week in order to be eligible to work.

Then in September, vaccine mandates were imposed on healthcare workers and companies with 100 workers or more.

The mandate would cover at least 80 million employees, it was estimated.

Court rulings, however, have blocked these mandates for now after multiple attorney generals of Republican states along with conservative groups sued the Biden government for imposing the vaccine mandates.

(With inputs from Reuters and The Guardian)