And so a major crisis has been averted — for a few months, at least. The House of Representatives by a 285-144 vote with 87 Republicans voting yes has approved the Senate’s bipartisan bill passed earlier reopen the government and avert a potentially catastrophic debt limit default. It’s a temporary fix, which raises the question of whether Washington’s political class will be repeating the whole drama a few months from now. But tonight, in most quarters here and abroad, there is a sigh of relief:
Sixteen days after a federal government shutdown began and one day before the United States would have exhausted its ability to borrow money, Congress approved a bill to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling until Feb. 7. President Obama has promised to sign the legislation immediately, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal workers could be back at work Thursday.
By a vote of 81 to 18, the Senate sent the 35-page bill to the House of Representatives, where it was approved 285-144 just a little over two hours later. All 198 Democrats present in the House voted yes, and 87 Republicans voted yes. All 144 no votes were Republicans.
“We fought the good fight; we just didn’t win,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview with conservative radio host Bill Cunningham.
At the White House, Obama hailed the Senate’s deal. “Once this agreement arrives on my desk I will sign it immediately and we will begin reopening the government immediately, and we can begin to lift this cloud of uncertainty and unease from our businesses and the and the American people.”
Obama said he hopes to move forward on other domestic priorities, including immigration reform and the farm bill. “We could get all these things done if everybody comes together in a spirit of ‘how can we move this country forward’ and put the last three weeks behind us.”
Boehner and other GOP leaders acknowledged defeat hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced terms of their deal on the Senate floor, drawing support from the White House. The Senate plan avoids any major changes to the Affordable Care Act, a major victory for Democrats and a repudiation to Republicans who for weeks tried to use the threat of a shutdown and potential default to force changes in the law.
Under the agreement to reopen the government, the House and Senate are directed to hold talks and reach accord by Dec. 13 on a long-term blueprint for tax and spending policies over the next decade. Mr. Obama said consistently through the standoff that he was willing to have a wide-ranging budget negotiation once the government was reopened and the debt limit raised.
Mr. Boehner and his leadership team had long felt that they needed to allow their restive conference to pitch a battle over the president’s signature health care law, a fight that had been brewing almost since the law was passed in 2010. Now, they hope the fever has broken, and they can negotiate on issues where they think they have the upper hand, such as spending cuts and changes to entitlement programs.
But there were no guarantees that Congress would not be back at loggerheads by mid-January and deep skepticism exists in both parties that Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who will lead the budget negotiations, can bridge the chasm between them.
“This moves us into the next phase of the same debate,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat. “Our hope is now that Speaker Boehner and his caucus have played out their scenario with a tragic outcome, perhaps they’ll be willing to be more constructive.”
As Republican lawmakers left the closed meeting Wednesday, some were already thinking of the next fight.
“I’ll vote against it,” said Representative John C. Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, referring to the Senate plan. “But that will get us into Round 2. See, we’re going to start this all over again.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.