The House approved a bill Wednesday night to prevent a government shutdown, punting a slew of tough spending fights to the end of the year.
Speaker Mike Johnson once again relied heavily on Democrats to pass the measure, which would leave federal agencies with static budgets through Dec. 20, provide the embattled Secret Service with an additional $231 million and allow FEMA’s disaster relief fund to scrape by through hurricane season.
The Senate is expected to pass the nearly three-month spending patch later Wednesday night, with members eager to leave Washington and campaign ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
The House passed the so-called continuing resolution in a 341-82 vote, with more Democrats voting for it than Republicans in what’s becoming a typical scenario for Johnson when faced with muscling must-pass spending legislation through the House. A majority of GOP lawmakers backed it, with 132 voting for it and 82 opposing it.
Once President Joe Biden signs the stopgap, officially thwarting a shutdown that would have kicked in on Tuesday, congressional leaders will have exactly 80 days to negotiate a trillion dollar-plus compromise that provides federal agencies with updated budgets for the rest of the fiscal year. Many of the details of those negotiations will depend on who’s set to control Congress and the White House.
“I don’t think you can minimize the importance of the next president,” said Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a senior Republican appropriator. “They’ll have a lot of say as to a lot of this. I think we’re speculating on a lot of those things until we know what happens in November.”
Appropriators in both chambers have been pushing to wrap up fiscal 2025 government funding talks before the end of the calendar year, prior to the start of a new administration and new Congress in January.
“Once we get the CR passed, we can all skip that drama and get to the negotiating table and cut to the chase to write serious bipartisan full year funding bills that can be signed into law,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
Once lawmakers return from their lengthy recess in mid-November — and have a better understanding of how the power dynamics in Washington are set to shift — they’ll quickly find themselves embroiled in a fight over funding levels for the military and domestic programs.
Those funding levels, negotiated in a debt limit deal last summer by President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, will come under renewed scrutiny, as they only allow for a 1 percent funding hike for both defense and non-defense programs. Congressional spending leaders will surely spar over whether a final deal needs to include tens of billions of dollars outside of those funding caps, giving agencies a little more money to work with.
Lawmakers will also have to contend with a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a rapidly dwindling pot of disaster cash and myriad other issues as both parties jockey for leverage in a post-election landscape. Republicans could also push offsets that Democrats will never accept, like yanking back more money for the IRS.
While the funding fix through Dec. 20 allows a cash-strapped Disaster Relief Fund to keep limping along, lawmakers are stressing that a major infusion of funding will likely be needed by the end of the year. FEMA has been in a disaster-aid deficit, pausing some work in recent weeks that’s not considered “life sustaining” but is still necessary, like rebuilding in Maui after last summer’s wildfires.
“I don’t understand why we’re not doing disaster aid [right now], but we’ll deal with it in December,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House.
“Nothing’s easy,” DeLauro added of the upcoming government funding fight. “We’ll keep at it and we’ll get it done.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
