Vote ends threat of government shutdown and ensures funding for federal agencies until September, but battle over immigration reform postponed

The $1.1tn US budget finally cleared Congress on Saturday night after hours of last-minute legislative bargaining that secured a number of unexpected wins for Democrats but failed to stop a controversial plan to help Wall Street banks.

The so-called “cromnibus” – a 1,600-page omnibus spending bill that funds most of government until next September – passed in the Senate by 56 to 40 votes. It also postpones a battle over Barack Obama’s immigration reform until March with a separate three-month continuing resolution to fund the Department for Homeland Security.

But a last-ditch effort by conservative senator Ted Cruz to take more immediate action on immigration served to delay the final vote and created a surprise window for Democrats to rush through a series of previously-stalled personnel confirmations.

Cruz scuppered the original plan agreed with his party’s leadership to hold the cromnibus vote on Friday night by insisting there be an opportunity to vote on whether the president’s executive action on immigration was unconstitutional.

This failed, voted down by 22 votes to 74, but the resulting delay allowed outgoing Senate majority leader Harry Reid to use the unexpected Saturday session to hold a 10-hour voting marathon and confirm 24 nominations for vacant judicial posts and government jobs.

In his final few hours in charge of the Senate, a visibly-delighted Reid also filed procedural motions on a number of even more controversial Obama nominations, including Dr Vivek Murthy, who the Republicans have long opposed as surgeon general due to his views in favour of gun control. These are now likely to be voted through in short final session on Monday.

Cruz’s token protest against immigration reform irritated a number of moderate Republicans, such as Senator Lindsey Graham who said he had given Democrats an unnecessary victory on the nominations.

Lindsey Graham (@GrahamBlog) I haven't seen Harry Reid smile like this in years. I don't like it one bit.

Nevertheless, the protest by rightwing Republicans against the elements of the cromnibus they oppose was more visible than similar concern among Democrats about other clauses, such as the support for Wall Street.

In stark contrast to Democrats in the House of Representatives, who nearly derailed the budget entirely on Thursday by voting unanimously against proceeding to a budget vote and had to be cajoled by the White House into passing it eventually, Senate Democrats were in more muted mood.

Just six of them – Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Al Franken, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders – voted against the procedural cloture motion that ended debate on the bill, though a total of 22 Democrats were against final passage.

Many in the party regard this year’s budget process as an example of how Washington dysfunction can be hijacked by well-funded special interests – pointing, in particular, to a hidden clause that rolls back Wall Street reforms by allowing public bailouts for certain derivatives trading and another than increases campaign finance limits tenfold.

Warren again spoke out against the Wall Street clause on Friday night in a speech that pointed out how Citigroup in particular had been allowed to gain an “unprecedented grip over economic policy-making”.

But her attempt at an amendment that would strip the Wall Street clause out of the budget was blocked by Reid who, along with Obama, argues that the compromise legislation is the best that Democrats are likely to win before they hand control of the Senate over to Republicans in January.



After a gruelling weekend that caps the least productive Congress in modern history, many lawmakers were simply relieved to make it to the end of the year without another government shutdown and held an impromptu carol concert after the last vote.