In our spotlight on Business Report tonight, Congress was able to narrowly avoid a government shutdown for now.

The government bill that was signed temporarily funds agencies to keep them open, but that funding only lasts until mid-November.

Every New Jersey Congress member voted in favor of the stopgap bill except Jeff Van Drew.

Now legislators have to head back to the drawing board to come up with a more permanent solution.

To break it all down, budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer joins me.

So, John, was this short term deal to avoid a government shutdown a big victory or now an even bigger challenge?

Yeah, I really think it's a little bit of both, right?

Any time that you avoid a government shutdown and all of the negative impacts that we see when that happens, that's a victory, right?

The government will keep functioning, you know, going forward.

So.

So that's it.

That's good.

The bad thing is we could be right back in the situation that we were in, headed into the weekend in just a few weeks by the middle of November.

And so also all of the same circumstances that led to the brinksmanship that we saw at the end of last week really are all still in play.

And we could even have a different House speaker by the time we get to the middle of November.

So, yes, good that we've made it through the weekend.

But what's coming up next month know that's still a big concern.

We know that there were several compromises to push the spending bill.

So what was taken out and what was added?

Yeah, I think importantly, you know, we have divided government at the federal level.

Right now we have Democrats running the Senate and we have Republicans running the House.

And so there has to be compromise if government is going to function.

And what we saw was on the side of the Senate, they were pushing hard for continued aid for Ukraine on a bipartisan basis.

That didn't make it.

House Republicans were pushing many were pushing for more funding for border security.

That didn't make it.

But importantly, what did make it through was funding for disaster relief.

And so whether you think about what just happened, say, in Warren County several weeks ago with heavy flooding, we just have a lot of flooding over the weekend that caused a state of emergency.

We've had wildfires in New Jersey, other parts of the country in the era of climate change, keeping disaster relief, funding afloat is an important thing.

So that's that did make it in again until let's see where we're at in November.

Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because the way things ended, could we be back here all over again come November?

And what does this mean not just for the American people, but for people here in New Jersey?

No, absolutely.

And so, you know, let's see how the next few weeks play out.

But, you know, heading into this weekend, we were sounding alarms.

You know, New Jersey has a big military presence, the joint base in Burlington, in Ocean County.

But there are other installations.

So the active duty military is an essential service.

So that means they have to work, but they don't get paid.

Newark Airport, TSA.

Air traffic controllers would be in the same situation, which, you know, if you're not getting paid, do you take your vacation?

Are you sick?

Do you call out?

You know, that can interrupt the airline industry.

When we look at just New Jersey families off of food assistance for women, infants and children would be hanging in the balance once again.

You know, crucial food assistance for a lot of New Jersey families would be among the ways that a shutdown could impact just the state of New Jersey.

We're not one of those states that relies heavily on a lot of federal funding.

We actually send more money to Washington than we traditionally get back.

But at the same time, we do have a big federal presence in the state.

So, you know, these are all concerns that we've now put on the back burner, But they may come back on the front burner in just a few weeks.

And just at a horrible timing because, of course, right before the holidays.

So it wouldn't be the best case scenario.

Right.

Happy Thanksgiving from the federal government.

John Reitmeyer, thank you so much for joining me and breaking it all down.

You're welcome.