by Madeleine Hubbard
The Senate on Thursday passed a massive $1.7 billion omnibus spending bill, sending the bill to the House for a hasty vote before midnight Friday to avert a partial government shutdown.
The bill includes at least $44 billion in additional money to help Ukraine thwart Russia’s invasion and was thrown into peril overnight by a GOP effort to force a vote on an amendment to the measure to extend a Trump-era effort to limit illegal immigration amid the pandemic by using a decades-old legal authority known as Title 42.
The one-year funding measure passed by a 68-29 vote in the Senate, according to the Associated Press and is expected to pass the Democrat-led House.
Independent Arizona Sen. Krysten Sinema reportedly brokered a deal to end the partisan stalemate by proposing her own amendment that also delays the ending of Title 42 but includes more funding for the Homeland Security Department, which got enough Democrat votes to extend the immigration ban and pass the entire funding measure.
The 4,155-page bill includes more than $850 billion for defense and more than $770 billion for domestic programs. The bill has been criticized for including expenses such as $410 million for border security in the Middle East, but not in the United States.
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Madeleine Hubbard joined Just the News as a fast file reporter after working as an editor at Breitbart News.
