Congress late Wednesday afternoon approved a short-term spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, pushing to December the deadline to pass a budget. The Senate approved the bill, which funds the government at the same level as last year, by a vote of 78-20 on Wednesday morning. Sen. Tom Carper, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a written statement after the vote that compared to a shutdown, a continuing resolution “sends the signal that sanity reigns in the Senate.” Still, he said, Congress has fallen into a habit of “crisis governing … lurching from one crisis to the next,” which hurts morale and makes the federal government less effective. The House approved the measure two minutes before 5 p.m., voting 277 to 151 to keep the government functioning until Dec. 11. Ninety-one Republicans and 186 Democrats voted in favor of the bill in the House, with 151 Republicans dissenting. Republicans had previously championed a measure that would fund the government through that date but eliminate all funding for Planned Parenthood.
A new Navy missile could fill a long-range air-to-air need for the U.S. Air Force’s fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-generation fighters. The Navy’s portfolio acquisition executive for munitions posted information on the AIM-424 Long Range Air-to-Air Missile online on Aug. 22, the same day it unveiled the project at the service’s…