Senate Prevents Government Shutdown, Approves Two-Week Stopgap Spending Bill

Everybody can relax - the U.S. Senate today passed a spending bill that will avert a shutdown of the federal government.

For two whole weeks.

The bill keeps the government running until March 18, which lawmakers say is probably not enough time to find common ground between the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate on a longer-term budget bill that would fund government operations through September.

That means Congress will likely return to its game of brinkmanship even as lawmakers begin work on next year's budget, consider tax and entitlement reform, and gird for an unpleasant vote to raise the government's borrowing authority.

"We'll be right back at it again two weeks from now unless we can agree on a long-term measure before then," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Such agreement, of course, is highly unlikely, given the depth of the divide between Democrats and Republicans - more specifically, between Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House - on what programs should be cut and by how much. Many of the spending cuts House Republicans are insisting on amount to cultural and class warfare, such as cuts to federal funding of Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. And Senate Democrats don't seem willing to back down. Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to fight such cuts, and other Dems are using stronger rhetoric.

"I will tell you something. It's only going to speak personally, not for the caucus: some of the cuts that they have put in this budget I will never vote for; I will filibuster," [Majority Whip Dick] Durbin said.

"I just think they're an outrage, some of the things that they're doing with education and in research and science, I just think are awful. I mean, they literally took a hacksaw for brain surgery, as far as I'm concerned. And it was a blunt instrument and a blunt result."

But House Republicans seem unfazed by the passionate Democratic opposition to the proposed budget cuts and seem equally intractable. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, in praising the two-week compromise, managed to imply both that Democrats had conceded to the need for their proposed cuts and that Republicans intended to hold fast.

"Now that Congressional Democrats and the administration have recognized the need for spending cuts - and agreed with our math on the level of the cuts - I am hopeful that [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] will join us on a long-term measure that contains serious spending reductions, or offer a plan of his own," Cantor said. "We need to act responsibly and put together a measure that will fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year instead of short-term band-aids."

So we can breathe a little easier for the next two weeks, but beyond that? It's anybody's guess what will happen.