Biden signs US$1.7 trillion government spending bill
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US President Joe Biden on Thursday (Dec 29) signed off on a US$1.7 trillion spending bill that will keep the US government funded through the next fiscal year – notably including another big package for Ukraine’s war effort.
Biden, who is vacationing over the New Year’s holiday on Saint Croix in the US Virgin Islands, tweeted a picture of himself signing the bill into law.
“It will invest in medical research, safety, veteran health care, disaster recovery” and funding for programmes combating violence against women,” he wrote. It also “gets crucial assistance to Ukraine. Looking forward to more in 2023”.
The funding bill won Republican support in the evenly divided Congress, ensuring easy passage and notching up another legislative win for Biden as he ends his second year in office.
The 4,000-plus page bill passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote of 68-29, with the support of 18 of the 50 Senate Republicans. It passed the House of Representatives on a largely party-line vote of 225-201.
Even critics have expressed grudging admiration for the Biden administration’s ability to get results as the 80-year-old Democrat closes in on a decision over whether to seek another four-year term in 2024.
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The bill includes US$45 billion in emergency military and economic aid for Ukraine, which is battling a full-scale Russian invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Washington earlier this month to plead for increased US assistance.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who is likely to become speaker, has vowed to subject the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine to greater oversight when his party takes control of the House in January and said Ukraine would no longer get a “blank cheque”.
The bill also features add-ons, such as a reform tightening a 19th-century law to make clear that vice-presidents do not have power to overturn election results.
That is intended to prevent any repetition of former president Donald Trump’s chaotic gambit to avoid conceding defeat to Biden in the 2020 presidential election – including by trying to coerce his vice-president Mike Pence to halt the certification of Biden‘s win. AFP, BLOOMBERG
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