House passes stopgap to prevent partial government shutdown Friday
The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan deal to avoid a partial government shutdown Thursday, pushing a two-pronged deadline later into March.
Lawmakers approved the spending patch 320-99, sending it to the Senate, which is likely to approve it later Thursday or Friday. Two Democrats joined 97 Republicans in opposing the measure.
The White House has said President Biden will sign the bill if the Senate passes it.
The measure, known as a continuing resolution or CR, pushes the first of two deadlines to fund some government departments back to March 8 from this coming Friday.
The second deadline, to fund all remaining agencies, will be pushed to March 22 from March 8.
In classic House Republican fashion, many lawmakers groused about the whole ordeal, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posting on X early Thursday: “It’s back to being the House of Hypocrites.”
“8 Republicans even joined the Democrats and ousted our first speaker [Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California] for dare breaking the ‘rules’ but now tomorrow will mark the third CR for our second speaker,” she added.
On Oct. 3, a band of eight House Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) joined 208 Democrats to oust McCarthy, ostensibly over frustrations with his use of a CR to avert a shutdown days earlier.
As Greene noted, McCarthy’s successor Mike Johnson (R-La.) has now presided over three CRs. But unlike McCarthy, he isn’t facing serious clamoring for a mutiny … yet.
Every new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, Congress is tasked with funding the government via 12 appropriation bills, often packaged together in an omnibus measure.
Nearly five months into fiscal year 2024, Congress has failed to complete this basic task, instead bouncing between self-imposed deadlines with stopgap CRs to buy time.
Back in January, congressional leaders unveiled a deal on top-line funding numbers, which had long been a sticking point.
That agreement provided 886.3 billion in spending for defense and $772.7 billion in various non-defense programs.
Congress has struggled to meet its two-pronged deadline due, in part, to quarreling over policy riders that would get attached to the appropriation bills as well as some logistical snarls.
Some House Republicans see the appropriations process as a tool they can deploy to try and wrangle concessions out of Democrats on issues such as immigration.
On Wednesday, the top four congressional leaders and top four appropriators laid out a roadmap to fund the government, hinting that they have hashed out six appropriations bills that would need to be approved ahead of the new March 8 deadline.
Those six bills fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as the Departments of Justice, Commerce, Energy, the Interior, Veterans Affairs, Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.
The next tranche of bills due March 22 would fund the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, Health and Human Services and State.
Biden is set to deliver the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on March 7, one day before the first spending deadline.
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