Trump signs stopgap spending bill to avert shutdown
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President Trump signed a one-week stopgap spending bill Friday night to avert a governement shutdown that Congress passed earlier in the day, giving lawmakers more time to negotiate a broader budget deal – as lawmakers also pushed off talks on a new health care package.
The spending measure passed the Senate by voice vote after clearing the House on a bipartisan 382-30 vote. It now goes to President Trump's desk.
Lawmakers had been facing a midnight deadline to pass a new funding bill. They will now continue to work on a bigger, $1 trillion budget package, under a new deadline of next Friday.
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said earlier that bargainers were "very close" to an agreement. But underscoring lingering battles over environmental and financial regulations, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., continued to object to what he called "poison pill riders."
But the bipartisan budget talks had progressed more smoothly after the White House dropped a threat to withhold payments that help lower-income Americans pay their medical bills and President Trump abandoned a demand for money for a border wall with Mexico.
On the separate health care bill, House Republican leaders are still scrounging for votes from their own rank-and-file.
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There is no vote planned for Friday, meaning Trump will finish his first 100 days without a major legislative accomplishment.
House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said it’s possible they could entertain a health care bill next week. “A definite maybe,” he said.
Republicans have revised an earlier version to let states escape a requirement under President Barack Obama's 2010 law that insurers charge healthy and seriously ill customers the same rates. They could also be exempted from Obama's mandate that insurers cover a list of services like hospitalization and substance abuse treatment and from its prohibition against charging older customers more than triple their rates for younger ones.
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The overall legislation would cut the Medicaid program for low-income people, eliminate Obama's fines for people who don't buy insurance and provide generally lower subsidies.
More than a dozen Republicans, mostly moderates, said they were opposing the legislation. Many others remained publicly uncommitted, putting party elders in a tough spot. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wants to avoid an encore of last month's embarrassment, when he abruptly canceled a vote because of opposition from moderates and conservatives alike.
On Wednesday, conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus announced their support for the revised health legislation.
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Fox News’ Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.