And at the Washington Post, "Senate passes spending bill; showdown with House looms":
The Senate passed a short-term spending bill Friday after voting to restore funding for President Obama’s health-care law, sending the measure back to a fractured House just four days before a threatened federal government shutdown.And on it goes.
The vote on final passage was 54 to 44. The measure is intended to keep the government operating through Nov. 15.
The fate of the bill remained uncertain in the House, where the Republican Party’s rebellious right wing is blocking a strategy by Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) for navigating a series of deadlines to keep the government funded and avoid the nation’s first default.
Senators began holding a series of votes starting after midday to move the bill forward. They voted 79 to 19 to invoke cloture on the House-passed bill, formally ending debate on it so that it could be amended to delete House Republican provisions to defund the health-care law. The cloture motion required 60 votes for passage.
The Senate subsequently voted 54 to 44 to restore funding for the health-care law. Minutes later, the body approved the overall bill by the same numbers.
They were straight party-line votes that highlighted the core disagreement between the two parties and the two chambers on how to proceed with funding the federal government.
All members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted to restore the funding and to pass the bill, while all Republicans present voted no. Two Republican senators, Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), were absent Friday and did not vote.
House Republicans are vowing to reject the restoration of funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare, and may opt to send the bill back to the Senate again with more changes. But with the government shutdown hanging in the balance, House leaders had not yet signaled early Friday how they will proceed.
I'll have more later.
Meanwhile, check Memeorandum for updates.
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