SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 17 — US President Joe Biden signed yesterday a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, a day after the Senate passed it, the White House said.

Biden signed the document on the sidelines of a dinner at the Legion of Honour museum in San Francisco, where leaders are attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit.

The Senate’s 87-11 vote on Wednesday marked the end of this year’s third fiscal standoff in Congress that saw lawmakers bring Washington to the brink of defaulting on its more than US$31 trillion (RM145.2 trillion) in debt this spring and twice within days of a partial shutdown that would have interrupted pay for about 4 million federal workers.

US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson had produced the stopgap funding bill that drew broad bipartisan support, a rarity in modern US politics. Democrats said they were happy it stuck to spending levels that had been set in a May agreement with Biden and did not include poison-pill provisions on abortion and other hot-button social issues. — Reuters