Good evening. I'm John Yang. President Biden signed the short-term spending bill this morning that prevents a government shutdown.

The stroke of a pen ended chaotic days that saw President-elect Trump clashing with House members of his own party.

Final congressional approval of the bipartisan deal came just past the midnight deadline.

The measure extends current government funding through mid-March,

provides $100 billion in disaster relief to hurricane survivors,

and $10 billion in aid to farmers.

But lawmakers refused Mr. Trump's core demand to raise the nation's debt limit.

Lisa Desjardin, our congressional correspondent,

followed every step of this process on Capitol Hill this week.

Lisa, why did this take so long?

Why was this so hard?

Such a good question, John.

In the end, I think that this was a result of having an inexperienced speaker

who went way too far in making commitments to Democrats that he didn't even know he had the votes for either among his own Republican conference or the vote of approval from President-elect Trump, which we know is critical for Republicans in Congress.

What happened here was Speaker Johnson spent days negotiating with Democrats, and that bill

was much maligned because of its size, but in truth, a lot of the things added to that

bill were bipartisan policies generally in nature.

But there were a few things in there that many Republicans simply couldn't stomach, and my reporting is talking to, in fact, committee chairs who are Republicans, is that Johnson

just didn't keep them informed on what was going on.

He was talking to Democrats when he didn't have the votes to do it.

This way oversimplifies things, John, but it's a little bit like one member of a family agreeing

to buy a house on a handshake, not telling their

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