Senate votes to keep White House closed, slaughterhouses open

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times:

Senators voted Wednesday to keep the White House closed to public tours, turning back a Republican-led effort to free up money to open the building back up after the sequesters.

But at the same time senators did vote to restore money for slaughterhouse inspections, which they said will help make sure the country’s meat-packing plants can continue to operate at full steam despite the sequesters.

SEE RELATED: Obama suggests Secret Service at fault for shuttered White House tours

Those voters were two of a series of high-profile showdowns on the Senate floor Wednesday as it pushed toward passage of a bill to fund the government through the rest of this fiscal year.

The bill cleared on a 73-26 vote and sends the bill back to the House, which is expected to pass it and send it to President Obama without any hiccups. That will ensure the government avoids a shutdown later this month.

As part of the debate, senators also voted to limit federal spending on political science research, but shot down a move to boost the Pentagon’s operations budget and by cutting from its biofuels program.

The votes mark the first chance lawmakers have had to grapple with specific spending after the sequesters, which were the automatic budget cuts that went into effect March 1 and that have slashed agency budgets across the federal government.

Senators nibbled away what they considered the worst parts of the sequester by restoring the military’s tuition assistance programs and adding back the money for food inspectors at slaughterhouses. Without that money, inspectors were going to have to be furloughed, which would have cut 5 billions of pounds of beef, pork and poultry production out of the U.S. economy this year.

But they declined to undo Mr. Obama’s decision to cancel White House tours — a move he made earlier this month as one of the casualties of the budget sequesters, setting off a chorus of complaints from Congress and the public.

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Symbolism from the top.