US President approves temporary budget bill to avoid government shutdown

On March 1 local time, US President Joe Biden signed a short-term spending bill to avoid the risk of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.

The temporary spending bill would fund some federal agencies through March 8 and another group of departments through March 22, instead of the March 1 and March 8 deadlines, giving Congress more time to complete and pass a full-year budget bill.

Previously, on February 29, the temporary budget bill was passed by both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

President Biden called the recent votes in both houses of Congress “good news for the American people,” but stressed that this was only a short-term solution, not a long-term one.

This is the fourth temporary extension in recent months and many lawmakers expect it to be the last in the current fiscal year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said negotiators had completed six annual spending bills for federal agencies and were “close to final agreement on others.”

As planned, next week, the US House of Representatives and Senate will pass a package of six spending bills to send to the president before March 8.

Lawmakers will then work to fund the rest of the government before the new March 22 deadline.

At the end of the process, Congress is expected to approve more than $1.6 trillion in spending for the fiscal year that begins October 1.

The amount is roughly the same as the previous fiscal year and is the figure former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the White House last year.

The bill also includes about $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine and other war zones.

In a statement on February 29, Mr. Biden emphasized: “It is time for House Republicans to put national security first and urgently send this bipartisan bill to my desk.”