National News Alert

House approves bill to avoid government shutdown

The House on Wednesday House took the first step to avoid a government shutdown, approving a Republican bill to provide $982 billion in funding for the second half of the fiscal year, keeping agencies humming when the mechanism currently funding government expires March 27.

The measure would provide new flexibility to the Pentagon to manage the so-called sequester's deep, automatic spending cuts, but would otherwise leave those reductions in place for the year.

Senate Democrats and Obama generally favor the bill, but have signaled that they will seek some amendments to the bill to help blunt the impacts of the $85 billion in cuts this fiscal year for domestic programs as well.

Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-takes-first-step-to-avoid-government-shutdown/2013/03/06/f50c79da-8671-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html