WASHINGTON – The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a two-year tax and spending bill that rolls back automatic spending cuts and may end the budget brinkmanship that has dominated Congress for three years.
The measure was sent to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it.
The 64-36 vote was far closer than the overwhelming 332-94 vote in the House last week. That reflected the particular politics of the Senate, where a Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, was the budget’s shepherd and where Republicans facing tea party challenges next year or positioning themselves for presidential runs in 2016 opted to oppose it. Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee and the deal’s co-negotiator, gave House Republicans cover to give their assent.
Work has already begun to turn the budget’s new military and domestic spending caps into detailed spending legislation.
The House and Senate appropriations committees must pass that legislation by Jan. 15 or risk another government shutdown when the current, stopgap spending measure is exhausted.
But it sets total spending levels only for the current fiscal year ($1.012 trillion) and the next ($1.014 trillion) and does not say how the money should be spent.
The appropriations committees now have less than four weeks to produce a huge bill that funds virtually the entire government, agency by agency, program by program, before much of the government again runs out of money Jan. 15.
