WASHINGTON – Lawmakers prevented a government shutdown The election is 40 days away, but they will face another financial crisis just before the holidays and the new Congress and president take office.
Bipartisan negotiators are trying to make progress on 12 bills needed to fund federal agencies for the 2025 fiscal year.
Still, there is little time to pass these bills during a lame-duck session; House members and senators are scheduled to be in Washington for only five weeks from Election Day until the end of the year, and the two chambers have not agreed on any of the dozens of measures known as appropriations bills.
A more likely scenario is that Democrats and Republicans will strike a year-end deal on a big, sweeping omnibus spending package or tackle the issue again with another continuing resolution, or CR, that would extend funding into the new year. short-term basis.
They need a new funding deal before federal funding runs out on Dec. 20.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., insisted this week that the days of pre-Christmas omnibuses loaded with bipartisan legislative priorities are over.
“We’re not going to go back to the Christmas omnibus spending tradition, and that’s my commitment to everybody,” Johnson told reporters after passing the House temporary funding measure on Wednesday.
Pressed on whether he would promise not to put an omnibus on the floor in December, Johnson did not directly answer: “We’ve worked very hard to break that tradition … and we’ll see what happens in December.”
When Congress faces a year-end funding deadline, senior lawmakers said, it will likely end up where it has been before: with a broad omnibus spending package.
“I expect we will negotiate an omnibus,” said Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a member of the Appropriations Committee, noting that Johnson said there would be no more CRs, then passed a new CR on Wednesday.
“A speaker, with all due respect, has no ability to draw a line in the sand when he can’t even control his own smell. They always need Democrats to really get things done, and we’re running from the minority,” he said. “And so I’m pretty confident that at the end of the day, we’re going to make sure we pass omnibus funding.”
More House Democrats than Republicans voted for the CR on Wednesday, which would have prevented it from starting next week, continuing a pattern of minority legislation getting through this lower house of Congress.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., predicted the two parties could reach a deal and avoid a shutdown in December. But he said the outcome of the election will ultimately dictate what happens.
The continuation of divided government could lead to tense negotiations, for example, if Republicans sweep the House, Senate and White House, they could push for another short-term funding boost until 2025 after they take office.
“I’m always worried [a shutdown] until you don’t have to worry about it. But no, I don’t think so. I think we’ll get there,” Cole said of the possibility of a December closing. “A lot will depend on who wins the election and what the president-elect wants to do, whether it’s Donald Trump or the current vice president, Harris.”
While it’s impossible to predict who will prevail on Nov. 5, Johnson is fighting to increase the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and he said Wednesday that he wants to remain speaker in the next Congress if the GOP can hold the House. So he will have to tread carefully as he negotiates a new funding deal in December, hoping not to alienate rank-and-file Republicans who may need to keep their votes in the hands of the speaker.
Asked about the omnibus, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the Freedom Caucus who has sometimes clashed with Johnson, said Republicans “will fight this, we will make our case to the American people about how there won’t be a Christmas omnibus. Good for the American people, it will collect the debt.
Although he voted no on the CR on Wednesday, Roy praised Johnson’s funding strategy, blaming 14 Republicans who overturned Johnson’s original plan to link his six-month funding bill to a Trump-backed bill. SAVE Actit requires proof of citizenship to vote. After that plan collapsed, Johnson struck a deal with Democrats on a clean, roughly three-month CR that would carry the government through December.
“I thought that what Speaker Johnson and all of us were fighting to bring together on the floor was a noble effort to get out of December, Goal 1 and Goal 2, get the SAVE Act out of there and fight for that and look at what. is happening,” said Roy, the author of the SAVE Act.
Some Republicans, he said, “decided to kill him, so they have to answer that there is a CR in December. Congratulations, congressmen.”
The full House has already passed five of the 12 appropriations bills for the new fiscal year. The Senate Appropriations Committee referred 11 of the 12 spending bills to a vote, but none of them came up for a vote. Identical versions of all 12 bills must pass both houses of Congress each year to fund the government, which rarely happens, with recent Congresses relying heavily on CRs and omnibuses to keep the lights on.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, “What Leader Schumer should have done was bring up the appropriations bills. So some of them would have already been signed into law or headed to the president’s desk.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top GOP appropriator in the upper chamber, cited D.N.Y.
Conservative Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he was deeply concerned that Congress would give up trying to pass individual appropriations bills and bundle everything into one giant omnibus.
“Of course I do. Everyone does because it’s the same thing this town keeps repeating. We’re looking at some big spending right before Christmas that nobody really saw because the deal was cut by the Four Corners,” Donald said, referring to top congressional leaders: Johnson; Sumerian; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y.
“They cut some deals with the White House and everybody goes home,” he said, “and the problems continue in our nation’s capital.”