Senate Majority Leader John Thune, President Trump and a group of Senate conservatives reached an agreement Friday night to set aside a vote on a budget resolution and push much of the stalled SAVE America Act past the chamber’s August recess. The deal defuses a standoff that had threatened to tie up the Senate floor in the weeks before a critical government funding deadline.
Separately, Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins and Vice Chair Patty Murray announced a bipartisan continuing resolution that would keep federal agencies funded at existing levels through December 11, averting a shutdown just before the midterm elections. Current funding expires September 30, and an 89 to 4 test vote signaled the stopgap measure has strong bipartisan support heading toward final passage.
Trump had pushed hard for the SAVE America Act, telling reporters this week that there was nothing more important on his legislative agenda. But with Republicans wary of a shutdown fight so close to the midterms, GOP leadership opted to bank the funding win now and revisit the broader package later.
The emerging deal also pauses a Trump administration effort to attach new political criteria to federal grant funding, a provision that had drawn pushback from Democrats and some Republicans. A separate administration request for roughly 1 billion dollars to build so called Trump class battleships was left out of the package entirely.
Lawmakers now head into the August recess with the funding fight temporarily defused, though the SAVE America Act and other unresolved spending questions are expected to resurface once the Senate returns in the fall. Aides in both parties said the agreement buys time without resolving the underlying disagreement over how aggressively to tie federal spending to policy riders, meaning another round of negotiations is all but guaranteed once senators return from recess in September. For now, both sides are calling it a win they can take home to voters.
