Congressional leaders agreed to a funding deal Wednesday that would prevent a partial government shutdown this weekend, extending the expiration dates for federal finances until later in March as lawmakers iron out the final details of a $1.7 trillion spending package.
Under this agreement between House and Senate leadership, funding for those departments and the Commerce, Justice and Interior departments would expire on March 8 instead, a week later than planned. Funding for the rest of the government, including the Defense and State departments, would be extended until March 22.
Two people familiar with the budget talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the fragility of the negotiations, confirmed the details of the plan. House and Senate leaders formally announced the arrangement later Wednesday afternoon.
The House could vote as soon as Thursday on the legislation, the people said.
The purpose of the extension is to give lawmakers more time to finalize full-year spending legislation for those agencies. But now the agreement will set off a mad dash on Capitol Hill to approve the extension, called a continuing resolution, or CR, before the clock strikes midnight on Friday and sets off even a brief shutdown. Even after the deal was reached, it’s not certain that Congress will be able to act in time.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) floated the extension Tuesday to Democrats, who reacted favorably — but only to a point.
“If that’s what it takes to get this done, then let’s do it. But this ‘kicking the can down the road’ crap really does need to stop,” said Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.), the top Democratic negotiator on the defense appropriations bill.
Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with President Biden in the Oval Office on Tuesday to discuss the impending lapse of funding and emerged optimistic about a plan to avoid a shutdown.
“As the president and congressional leaders made clear at yesterday’s meeting, we cannot allow a government shutdown,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Wednesday. “The bipartisan agreement announced today would help prevent a needless shutdown while providing more time to work on bipartisan appropriations bills and for the House to pass the bipartisan national security supplemental as quickly as possible.”
Congress has passed three short-term spending bills between September and January. In November, Johnson pushed through a CR that staggered the expiration dates for federal funding, then extended them with another continuing resolution in January as lawmakers continued to struggle to pass spending measures for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2023, and ends Sept. 30.
But policy demands from Republicans and Democrats alike dragged out negotiations and pushed Congress to the brink of a shutdown. The House GOP loaded up its spending bills with far-right policy demands, including limits on abortion access and LBGTQ rights and harsh new immigration restrictions. One policy rider eliminated Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s salary.
Democrats requested additional funding for the federal anti-hunger program for low-income women, infants and children, known as WIC. The program has seen an enrollment surge since the start of 2023, drawing down federal funds faster than anticipated, experts say. Biden requested $1 billion to plug that gap.
House Republicans countered by demanding changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. The proposal would launch a pilot program that would restrict participants’ purchases to “nutrient dense” items.
Democrats also pushed back against a provision that would allow veterans who need help managing their federal benefits to own and purchase firearms. That measure, brought by Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), passed the upper chamber in the fall, but drew opposition during spending negotiations.
But many of those demands appeared to begin falling away late Tuesday as negotiators zeroed in on a stopgap deal.
“As far as figuring out how to fund [WIC], we’ve done that,” Sen. John Hoeven (N.D.), the top GOP negotiator on the agriculture bill, told reporters Wednesday.
“I know they’re fighting over it,” Kennedy said of his provision on veterans and guns, “but Senator Schumer looked me the eye and said, ‘You have my word and it will survive conference,’ so I’m taking him at his word.”
But Republicans, especially in the House, have very little leverage to secure their policy. Johnson, the speaker since Oct. 25, enjoys a narrow two-seat majority. And the archconservative Freedom Caucus, a band of GOP rebels, has repeatedly stalled business on the House floor over frustration with Johnson and Schumer’s spending deal.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who chairs the Freedom Caucus, said he preferred a year-long funding bill that would trigger automatic spending cuts. He added the House should attach strong new immigration restrictions, aid for Israel and an overhauled foreign intelligence surveillance bill to the funding deal and dare the Democratic-controlled Senate to reject it.
Such a proposal would almost surely trigger a shutdown, which is the preference of the Freedom Caucus, members have said.
“If our House Republican colleagues of good will want to avert a shutdown — if they want to govern responsibly as they say they do — then they must resist the centrifugal pull of the extreme hard right who want to burn everything down, who openly use the threat of a shutdown to push their extreme agenda,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “They’re brazen about it.”
