Senate approves omnibus package funding government for fiscal year 2014

by Jed Lewison.

The Senate has now officially approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill for the rest of the fiscal year. Senators approved the legislation on a 72 to 26 vote just minutes after invoking cloture by the same margin. Senators could have demanded up to 30 hours of debate following the cloture vote, but despite their complaints about Majority Leader Harry Reid's efforts to bring order to the Senate, Republicans chose not to fight.

The bill, which passed yesterday in the House with a 359 to 67 vote, will go to the president's desk for his signature and will prevent a government shutdown until at least next October. It's the counterpart to the budget deal passed by Congress last month. That measure established spending levels; this bill actually spends the money.

Although the bill is hardly a progressive dream, it does roll back some of the sequester's spending cuts and has generally been viewed as a defeat for tea party Republicans. A total of 63 of the 67 votes against the legislation in the House came from Republicans and in the Senate, all of the no votes came from Republicans.

It wasn't as dramatic as the vote to end the Republican shutdown last October, but it is interesting that in both chambers, more Democrats voted for the legislation than Republicans. That's not surprising in the Senate, because Democrats are in the majority, but it's notable that on the House side 193 Democrats voted in favor of the bill compared with 166 Republicans.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/16/1270198/-Senate-approves-omnibus-package-funding-government-for-fiscal-year-2014