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The House passed a nine-week spending bill to avert a U.S. government shutdown, hours before it was set to begin, on a 254 to 175 vote. The legislation passed the Senate earlier Thursday and now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk, Bloomberg News reported. The bill passed both chambers after Democrats dropped an earlier attempt to attach a debt-ceiling suspension to the bill in the face of implacable Republican opposition to that measure. GOP senators blocked a version of the bill containing the debt ceiling language on Monday. The federal government would be kept open through Dec. 3 under the legislation. The bill also contains $28.6 billion for states recovering from hurricanes and wildfires, as well as $6.3 billion to resettle refugees from the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

House Democratic leaders late yesterday postponed a vote yet again on the bipartisan infrastructure bill amid threats from progressives to tank it as leverage for a separate, larger package to expand social safety net programs, The Hill reported. After a long day of meetings between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the warring centrist and progressive factions of the caucus, as well as with White House staff, Democrats opted to delay a vote planned for Thursday rather than allow an embarrassing public failure on the House floor. Democratic leadership and the White House were hoping they could reach an agreement on a framework for the larger reconciliation bill that would convince House progressives to vote for the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill. Progressives worry that if they help pass the bipartisan bill before the reconciliation framework is agreed upon, centrists won't help them pass the reconciliation bill packed with progressive priorities. But as the night wore on, a deal on a framework with two key Democratic centrists, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), remained elusive despite haggling with top White House staff.

President Joe Biden is poised to avoid a disruptive shutdown of the federal government, but deal-making continues on his economic agenda before a planned vote today on an infrastructure package that underscores deep divisions among Democrats, Bloomberg News reported. The Senate will vote this morning -- the eve of the new fiscal year -- to extend government funding until Dec. 3, sending the package to the House and ultimately to Biden’s desk for signature with just hours to spare. Stripped of Republican-opposed language suspending the debt ceiling, the stopgap funding bill is expected to pass both chambers with bipartisan support. That will be the easiest item on Biden’s legislative to-do list. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Biden at the White House yesterday. Pelosi afterward affirmed her plan to bring to the House floor today the $550 billion infrastructure bill that Biden negotiated earlier this year, which now has become a focal point of tension between the two wings of the party.

Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill that would both fund the government and raise the country’s borrowing limit, escalating a political showdown over the government’s finances just days before it runs out of money, the Wall Street Journal reported. Senate Democrats sought to pass a House-approved stopgap measure that funds the government through Dec. 3, 2021, and suspends the debt limit through Dec. 16, 2022. They are racing to send the legislation to President Biden’s desk before the government’s current funding expires at 12:01 a.m. Oct. 1. While lawmakers in both parties negotiated the short-term government funding, Republicans voted against Monday’s procedural motion in a bid to force Democrats to address the debt limit themselves. With 48 in favor and 50 opposed, the legislation fell short of the 60 votes required to advance in the evenly split chamber. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has notified lawmakers that the government may be unable to keep paying its bills on time as early as next month if Congress doesn’t authorize additional borrowing. The failure of the procedural vote Monday could prompt Democrats to decouple the short-term spending measure and the debt-limit vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested last week that Democrats would do so, saying that Congress would pass a stopgap spending measure before the end of the month to keep the government funded. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said yesterday that Republicans would support the funding measure independent of a debt-ceiling vote. Senate Republicans have almost unanimously lined up against voting to raise the debt ceiling, as a protest against Democrats’ agenda, including the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill Democrats approved earlier this year and the broader $3.5 trillion education, child care, healthcare and climate bill they are now working on.