It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
The Senate approved a separate bill that allows D.C. to continue operating under its current budget, which seemed on track to pass in the House. Senator Susan Collins said it had President Trump’s support.
The measure, which passed with bipartisan support and minor changes, now heads back to the House. It is just the second legislative victory for the new Republican-controlled Congress.
Privately, many Senate Democrats conceded that their leader was doing his job by protecting his members from a tough vote and making a politically painful decision. But the backlash from his party was intense.
An afternoon vote was expected to clear the way for a Republican-written bill to keep government funding flowing past midnight after the top Senate Democrat said he would not block it.
A plain-spoken, sometimes cantankerous lawmaker, he balanced his conservative views with moderate stands on abortion rights, gay marriage and immigration reform.
The stopgap measure the G.O.P. is pushing to avert a government shutdown omits billions of dollars in member-requested projects, another way in which Congress has ceded its power on federal spending.
On spending, oversight and other issues, Republican lawmakers have willingly ceded power traditionally reserved for Congress to the Trump White House.
The top Senate Democrat said his members were not ready to provide the votes to allow the Republican-written stopgap spending measure to pass ahead of a March 14 midnight deadline.
While in Congress, Ms. Chavez-DeRemer was a co-sponsor of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, a sweeping labor bill that sought to strengthen collective bargaining rights.
Republicans are pitching the strategy as a way of avoiding a politically damaging shutdown fight while giving President Trump more power to go around Congress and set funding levels himself.