WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Saturday unveiled a short-term funding bill that would avert a shutdown at the end of next week and keep the government running through the end of September.
Johnson has said he will bring the funding bill to the floor for a vote early next week, likely Tuesday, before money runs out late Friday night. It’s unclear it has the votes to pass either chamber, as it was not negotiated with Democrats, making it an important test for the new Republican trifecta on a must-pass bill that requires bipartisan backing to become law.
President Donald Trump has backed Johnson’s approach said he’ll sign the bill if it reaches his desk, which would avoid a shutdown less than two months into his term.
The continuing resolution, or CR, includes an increase in defense spending while reducing non-defense discretionary spending. It does not expand the budget for additional emergency funding, disaster designations or community project funding, also known as earmarks.
“There’s no Christmas tree effect here,” a House Republican leadership staffer said. “It’s just what we need to fund the government and to allow that to happen.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, slammed the legislation within moments of its release Saturday.
“I strongly oppose this full-year continuing resolution, which is a power grab for the White House and further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people,” she said. “By essentially closing the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect our national security, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have handed their power to an unelected billionaire.”
Even prior to the bill’s release, House Democratic leaders came out in opposition to Johnson’s plan, warning that the emerging legislation could result in spending cuts to areas like health care, nutritional assistance and veterans benefits.
The gulf between the two parties on the continuing resolution raises the chances of a shutdown. If House Democrats unify against the bill, it’s unclear if Johnson and the Republicans would be able to muscle it through the chamber on a party-line vote, like they did with the budget resolution last month.
With a wafer-thin 218-214 majority, just two Republican defections could derail the measure. And Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., a vocal Johnson critic, has already vowed to vote no.
« It’s obviously a challenge for us, » Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, told reporters this week after he hosted a meeting on funding with key House and Senate Republicans.
If Johnson can push the stopgap bill through his chamber next week, all eyes would be on Senate Democrats. Republicans have a 53-47 advantage there, so Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., would need to secure seven Democratic votes to reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, torched the bill, calling it a “slush fund continuing resolution that would give Donald Trump and Elon Musk more power over federal spending—and more power to pick winners and losers, which threatens families in blue and red states alike.”
Neither party is pushing for a shutdown, but they continue to differ on how to avoid one. For Republicans, it could distract and delay them from passing a reconciliation package needed to tackle Trump’s agenda on border security, energy and tax cuts. And Democrats have demanded guardrails on the president’s power over spending directed by Congress, which the GOP opposes.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been blasting Trump, his billionaire adviser Musk and congressional Republicans for slashing federal spending and firing thousands of federal workers. And in a letter to colleagues Friday, Democratic leaders warned that a CR could impose more cuts that they called « not acceptable. »
But a shutdown would furlough millions of remaining federal workers in every part of the country.
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