Obama signs $1.1 trillion bill to finance government

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. President Barack Obama signed a $1.1 trillion bill to finance the government through Sept 30.

It clears the way for lawmakers to focus on the next potential fiscal showdown: Raising the federal debt ceiling, Bloomberg reports.

Congress as soon as next month will be confronted with the need to increase borrowing authority, risking a repeat of the partisan discord that last year and in 2011 took the U.S. to the brink of default.

While it remains to be seen whether the cross-party cooperation will carry over to the debt limit debate, senators hailed the final passage of the $1.1 trillion spending bill as a breakthrough, according to Bloomberg.

“In today’s era of shutdown, slowdown, slam-down politics, where negotiating occurs on cable TV rather than in committee rooms, we worked together,” Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, said before the vote. “We looked at how we could put together a bill that both sides of the aisle in both houses could agree upon.”

The Democratic-led Senate voted 72-26 to clear the spending measure yesterday, a day after the Republican-led House passed it, 359-67.

Obama’s budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, called passage of the legislation “a positive step forward for the nation and our economy.” In a statement last night, she cited funding for education, infrastructure and innovation.