How Congress Narrowly Avoided a Government Shutdown

n a dramatic turn of events, the House and Senate on Saturday passed a measure to extend government funding through mid-November, averting an imminent government shutdown just hours before the deadline. The last-minute bipartisan effort seemingly came together in a matter of hours, after months of negotiations across a divided Congress had gone nowhere and much of Washington had assumed an imminent shutdown was all but certain. Failure to pass a bill by midnight would have resulted in the fourth government shutdown in the last decade, impacting hundreds of thousands...