Funding for the federal government is scheduled to expire on March 27th. In order to avoid a government shutdown, both the House and the Senate have been working on temporary spending bills known as Continuing Resolutions (CR). The House CR passed last week by a wide bipartisan majority – with more than 50 Democrats joining all but 14 Republicans in voting for the legislation.
This week, the Senate has proposed a bipartisan CR – introduced by Senator Mikulski (D-MD) and Senator Shelby (R-AL) – that includes higher total spending than the House-passed CR.
The House-passed CR checks in at $982 billion, while the Senate has proposed a $1.043 trillion CR: a difference of more than $200 billion additional dollars in the Senate CR.