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Congress Approves Government Funding Bill, Averting a Shutdown As Legislation Heads to Biden’s Desk
The Senate passed legislation early Saturday morning to keep the government running through mid March, extend the farm bill for one year, and provide billions in relief to disaster victims and farmers — narrowly avoiding a shutdown after a messy week of negotiations on Capitol Hill. The bill will now head to President Joe Biden’s desk.
Minutes before midnight, the White House released a statement clarifying that the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was “a high degree of confidence” lawmakers would soon pass “the relevant appropriations and the President will sign the bill early Saturday morning
“Agencies will not shut down and may continue normal operations,” the statement continued.
In addition to extending the farm bill for one year and funding the government for another three months, the 118-page bill will send more than $100 billion in disaster relief and $30 billion in emergency funding for farmers. House Speaker Mike Johnson nixed the most recent legislative proposal’s provision to suspend the debt ceiling for another two years, a boon to the fiscal hawks in the House GOP conference who balk at any attempt to raise or suspend the nation’s borrowing limit.
Earlier Friday evening, House GOP leaders advanced the legislation through a suspension process that requires a two-thirds vote to pass. Johnson’s legislation easily cleared that bar in a 366–34 vote, with one member voting present, thanks to buy-in from House Democrats. Zero Democrats voted “no,” and most Republicans — 170 members — voted in favor. The Senate then voted 85 to 11 to pass the resolution.
The legislation’s passage means congressional leaders have effectively punted a debt ceiling fight into the next Congress, which president-elect Donald Trump has advised Republicans against.
The speaker’s latest plan came after a bruising week of messy negotiations and failed attempts to get both parties to rally behind a single plan.
House GOP leaders held a closed-door huddle with their members earlier Friday, during which Johnson reportedly laid out two possible scenarios about how to proceed after a long week marked by multiple failed attempts at rallying his conference behind a funding strategy. Another option was to break up the bill into separate components and hold different votes on a clean continuing resolution to fund the government through mid March, pass billions in disaster relief, and give emergency funding to farmers. In the end, Johnson went with a single bill.
House GOP leaders had to start government funding negotiations from square one Wednesday evening after billionaire Trump confidant Elon Musk, hard-line GOP fiscal hawks, and the president-elect torpedoed Johnson’s initial 1,547-page bipartisan deal over concerns that the legislation was stacked with a suite of costly and unrelated policy provisions, such as half a billion for childcare and a cost-of-living increase for congressional lawmakers.
Trump and vice president-elect J.D. Vance tried on Thursday to rally Republicans around Johnson’s second strategy – a 116-page bill that would fund the government through March, suspend the debt limit for two years, and pass billions in disaster relief and emergency aid to farmers. House GOP leaders tried unsuccessfully to muscle the legislation through the lower chamber through a rules suspension process. The bill failed in a 174-235 vote with one member voting “present,” marking yet another example of Johnson’s inability to count votes and read his own conference.
An almost entirely united Democratic caucus — 197 members — voted against the measure over concerns that the second bill completely overhauled the buffet of spending provisions Democrats had agreed on before they were iced out of negotiations ahead of the second bill.
And a whopping 38 House Republicans also voted “no” on Johnson’s Trump-endorsed 116-page bill Thursday evening over fiscal concerns with the legislation’s spending provisions and two-year debt ceiling suspension provision.
Trump spent the latter part of the week placing preemptive blame on Democrats in anticipation of a hypothetical shutdown, which looked possible earlier Friday.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
Even though the 118-page bill helped Congress avoid a shutdown, Johnson is treading on thin ice with a House GOP conference that is uneasy about his negotiating prowess and eager to head home for the holidays. On Friday evening, Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris wrote on social media that the bill’s costly spending provisions leave him feeling “undecided on what House leadership should look like in the 119th Congress.”
Even rank-and-file Republican members who typically vote the party line spent Friday expressing extreme frustration to reporters over Johnson’s leadership style and his decision to spend much of the day keeping members in the dark about leadership’s next moves.
“I don’t know what’s going on and that’s really part of the problem,” Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.) told reporters earlier Friday, before Johnson had announced his plan. “The fact that there is zero communication from leadership to the membership, and it’s very frustrating. It’s something that needs to change before January 3 here.”
“We need a clear understanding of how we’re going to do things next session because what’s happening right now is completely unacceptable,” she added.
Johnson’s weakened negotiating position after this week’s government funding fiasco comes two weeks before House GOP lawmakers return to Washington and decide whether to keep him in his current post in a January 3 vote.
Members like Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) – a perennial thorn in Johnson’s side – continue to flirt publicly with opposing Johnson for speaker, though it’s possible that a brief recess will cool intra-conference tensions and give lawmakers some breathing room ahead of the next Congress.
The Louisianan’s fate may also be in the hands of Trump, who helped him stave off threats to his speakership in the spring and has continued to project support for his hold on the gavel. If that changes, Johnson will be in a tight spot.
“I don’t know how this is going to impact it,” Representative Eric Burlison (R., Mo.), who voted against Johnson’s 116-page government funding measure, told NR in the U.S. Capitol Thursday evening. “I think at the end of the day if Trump is backing Johnson, he’ll be speaker.”
This is a developing story and has been updated with breaking news.