REUTERS - The U.S. Senate
passed legislation on Friday to fund the government through April and President
Barack Obama promptly signed it into law, after
Democrats who had sought more
generous healthcare benefits for coal miners stopped delaying action on the
measure.
Many government
services and operations would have been closed or suspended at midnight, when
current funding authority expired, if the Senate had not approved the bill. The
vote was 63-36.
The House of
Representatives passed the legislation on Thursday.
Obama signed the
measure, the White House said in a statement issued about 90 minutes after the
Senate passed it.
Democrats from
coal-producing states, led by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, had delayed
the Senate vote on the funding bill in a failed attempt to get a bigger
extension of miners' healthcare benefits that expire at the end of this year.
The Democratic
senators, many of whom are up for re-election in 2018, seemed eager to court
blue-collar voters who flocked to Republican President-elect Donald Trump in
elections last month. Some of the senators also appealed to Trump to help the
miners.
Trump "won coal
country big, that's for sure," incoming Senate Democratic Leader Chuck
Schumer said on the Senate floor.
"So we are
simply asking our president-elect, to communicate to the people in his party,
to get on board, live up to the promise we made the miners many years, decades
ago," Schumer said.
The legislation
provided financial support for four more months of healthcare benefits for coal
miners, through April, but Manchin and other Senate Democrats wanted at least a
year.
Senate Republicans
refused to reopen the issue. But Schumer said that Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell had promised Manchin he would work next year to continue the benefits
beyond April. Manchin and the other Democrats then stopped objecting to holding
the vote, although they still opposed the measure.
"I was born in
a family of coal miners," Manchin said. "And (if) I'm not going to
stand up for them, who is?"
Manchin, a moderate
Democrat who has been touted as a possible member of Trump's cabinet, is
scheduled to see Trump in New York on Monday. Manchin told reporters, however,
that "I'm not looking for a job."
The government
funding bill would keep federal agencies funded until April 28. It freezes most
spending at current levels.
Flint, Michigan,
which has endured a two-and-a-half-year struggle with lead-contaminated
drinking water, would get access to a $170 million fund for infrastructure
improvements and lead poisoning prevention under the bill.
The Senate also
passed a separate bill authorizing water projects around the country that
included directions for spending the Flint money and provisions to provide
relief to drought-stricken California. This measure was also approved by the
House on Thursday.
A provision in the
government funding bill would make it easier for Trump to win confirmation of
General James Mattis to be defense secretary early next year.
Republicans demanded
it to help Mattis get around a requirement that the defense secretary be a
civilian for seven years before taking the job. Mattis retired from the military
in 2013.
REUTERS
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