WASHINGTON — The Senate voted 87 to 13 Thursday to approve a continuing resolution that would keep the federal government funded through April 8, while Democrats and Republicans try to negotiate funding for rest of the fiscal year.
The stopgap measure, H J Res 48, which the House passed Tuesday by a vote of 271 to 158, goes to President Obama to be signed into law.
The current CR, PL 112-4, which was enacted on March 2 and includes about $4 billion of funding cuts, expires on Friday.
This latest legislation is the sixth temporary stopgap measure approved by Congress for fiscal 2011, which ends on Sept. 30.
It includes $6 billion of additional spending cuts agreed to by lawmakers from both parties, such as rescissions of unobligated funds for the National Park Service and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Altogether, Congress has cut a total of roughly $10 billion in funds from the last two stopgap measures.
Democrats and Republicans now have another three weeks to negotiate funding for the rest of the fiscal year and an aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said congressional leaders from both parties will continue talks during next week’s recess for a constituent work week.
The House approved legislation earlier this year that would fund fiscal 2011 at roughly $60 billion below fiscal 2010 levels.
Hard line conservatives complained the cuts did not go far enough. Democrats objected to many of the program cuts and the Senate rejected it.
The stopgap measures have prevented the Securities and Exchange Commission from moving forward with many of the mandates imposed by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
The commission has been unable to hire the 35 employees it needs to build up a new municipal securities office that would report directly to the chairman and to examine newly registered municipal advisers.
In addition, the commission has suspended the field hearings it was holding as part of its review of the municipal securities market.
The SEC held hearings in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., but suspended hearings to be held in Birmingham, Ala., Tallahassee, Fla., Chicago, and Austin, Texas.
The SEC also has cut travel 10%, so that enforcement officials were unable to attend a recent bond lawyers meeting in Austin, zeroed out bonuses, and delayed technology spending.
