Senate committee advances all funding bills for first time in half a decade

The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced the last of the upper chamber's funding bill on Thursday, setting up floor votes and marking the first time since 2018 that the panel had approved all of its annual appropriations bills.

The panel approved four bills on Thursday, according to The Hill, which would fund the Department of Defense and those of Labor, the Interior, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Education. In total, the four bills amounted to more than $1 trillion in funding proposals.

Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Vice Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, celebrated the committee's success in approving the proposals saying, "what this committee has achieved over the last several weeks shows that it is possible for Congress to work together and work through real differences—to find common ground and produce serious, bipartisan bills that can be signed into law."

"There’s more to do: we still have to get these bills passed through the full Senate, and House, and signed into law—and that is our focus moving forward," they stated.

In the lower chamber, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy managed to secure majority support in the House to approve the first of a series of 12 appropriations bills, which will likely come into conflict with Senate proposals.

Congress has until Sept. 30 to fund the government or risk a shutdown.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.