The U.S. Congress approved a short-term funding bill Thursday that ends the possibility of a federal government shutdown next week, but a broader budget battle about taxes and spending for 2013 is only just beginning.
The stop-gap spending resolution, approved on a broad bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives, locks in the $85 billion across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.
But the legislation includes provisions that will blunt the impact of the sequester. Within hours of the bill's passage, the Defense Department announced that furlough notices scheduled to go out Friday to 800,000 civilian workers will be delayed until April 5.