US Senate passes critical funding bill as govt tumbles towards shutdown

The fate of the bill remains uncertain in the lower chamber of Congress

The US Senate passed a critical stopgap spending bill early Friday after an hours-long delay forced Congress to miss a midnight deadline and sent the government tumbling into a shutdown.

The bipartisan measure, which passed 71 to 28, was now headed to the House of Representatives for what is expected to be a pre-dawn Friday vote, as congressional leaders scrambled to restrict the second government shutdown in three weeks to just a matter of hours.

But the fate of the bill remained uncertain in the lower chamber of Congress, where fiscal conservatives have bridled at excessive spending allowed under the budget deal, and liberals complain that it does nothing to shield many undocumented immigrants from deportation, a longstanding Democratic priority.