The White House said President Donald Trump signed the Stop Gap Spending Act early Thursday to prevent a government shutdown in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
At midnight, the American spending power
was gone. The White House announced that it had signed the bill shortly after
returning from the Minnesota campaign.
The bill will keep the government working
on current spending levels until December 11. The Senate passed the bill on
Wednesday, which passed the House easily last week.
Congressional Democrats and Republicans,
along with White House officials, last week agreed to provide more aid to
farmers and more food aid to low-income families.
The bill provides 30 billion to the
Department of Agriculture's Commodity Credit Corporation, which the
administration uses to send payments to farmers to get rid of the virus. Democrats
received about 8 billion for the Children's Infectious Diseases Program, which
typically feeds school-going children.
With the Temporary Expenditure Bill
scrapped, lawmakers will try to complete work on the 12 annual budgets for
fiscal year 2021 in the lame duck session after the November and December
elections. The Senate has not yet drafted a bill, and it is likely to replace
Trump's payment for the wall on the US-Mexico border and the military funds he
directed last year to pay for border security. But no battle is ahead yet.
It was a blockade on the border wall that
led to a 35-day government shutdown that began in December 2018.
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