Biden signs stopgap measure to avert government shutdown

President Joe Biden on Thursday night passed a stopgap measure to avoid a federal government shutdown.

The House of Representatives earlier passed the measure on a bipartisan vote about an hour after the Senate approved it.

The bill went to Biden's desk for signature – just hours before the Thursday midnight deadline to keep the federal government fully operational. 

As in recent years, congressional Democrats and Republicans could not agree on an annual spending bill through the regular appropriations process and had to resort to a short-term measure to avoid a partial shutdown, which is essentially the shuttering of non-essential federal services and the furloughimg of non-essential employees. 

The so-called "continuing resolution" signed by Biden will keep the government fully operation through Dec. 3, which means Congress must soon return to negotiations to keep the government running past roughly the next nine weeks.

Congress has occasionally failed to meet the deadline, resulting partial shutdowns, most recently from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan 25, 2019 – the longest in U.S. history.

The sticking point was then-President Trump's request for roughly $5 billion in that continuing resolution for his security wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.