Just hours before a midnight deadline, a bitterly divided Congress approved a stopgap spending bill Wednesday to keep the federal government open — but with no assurance there won't be yet another shutdown showdown in December.
Democrats helped beleaguered House Republican leaders pass the measure by 277-151 — a lopsided vote shrouding deep disagreements within the GOP — after the Senate approved it by a 78-20 tally earlier in the day. The votes sent the bill to President Barack Obama for his signature.
Approval of such stopgap measures used to be routine, but debate this year exposed acrimonious divisions between pragmatic Republicans such as House Speaker John Boehner and more junior lawmakers in the party's tea party wing who are less inclined to compromise.
The tea partyers had demanded that the must-pass measure be used to punish Planned Parenthood, stripping it of federal money because of its practice of supplying tissue from aborted fetuses for scientific research.
House Republicans opposed the measure by a clear margin, but Democratic support was unanimous.
The legislation finances the government through Dec. 11, providing 10 weeks to negotiate a more wide-ranging budget deal that would carry past the 2016 presidential election. But the talks promise to be difficult, and success is not assured.
Boehner is resigning from Congress at the end of October, a decision he announced last week after informing Republicans he would not risk a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood.
"Today was a win for the Washington cartel, and another setback for the American people," said Rep. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who is using combat with Washington GOP leaders to help define his presidential campaign. "Republican leadership chose to abandon its constitutional power of the purse and to fund 100 percent of President Obama's failed agenda."
Longtime lawmakers bemoaned the chronic dysfunction on Capitol Hill and the collapse of the annual appropriations process that is supposed to be wrapped up by now. Democrats demanding a new budget deal have blocked work in the Senate, while a fight over the Confederate flag halted work in the House with only six of the 12 annual spending bills having passed.
"It is to my great dismay that we are at this point again, requiring a temporary Band-Aid to buy us time to do our duty," said Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, during House debate.