Congress Rushes to Avert a Shutdown as Conservatives Fume Over Plan

The Senate is set to kick off action shortly on a plan to stave off a government shutdown Friday night, extend funding for federal agencies and buy time for appropriators to write annual spending bills.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the plan on Sunday night following their agreement earlier this month to set discretionary spending for fiscal year 2024 at $1.66 trillion. As appropriators work to flesh out all the details of the spending plan, the “clean” stopgap bill Schumer and Johnson released on Sunday would continue federal funding into March, past looming January 19 and February 2 deadlines that could result in partial shutdowns. It would preserve the two-tiered structure chosen by Johnson, setting new deadlines for various departments on March 1 and March 8.

“The focus of this week will be to pass this extension as quickly as we can,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday afternoon on the Senate floor. “If both sides continue to work in good faith, I’m hopeful that we can wrap up work on the CR no later than Thursday. The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation in both chambers. We can’t pass these bills without support from Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate.”

It’s not completely clear that lawmakers can steer clear of a brief shutdown, given that any senator can delay the bill and the House will still have to pass it after the Senate does. The House canceled other votes it had planned for Tuesday due to the snowstorm that hit D.C. But Johnson faces a far more treacherous storm within his own party as he relies on Democratic votes to avert a shutdown.

The speaker had portrayed the stopgap funding bill, which includes no policy changes, as necessary to be able to pass the 12 annual appropriations bills individually — a key demand of his right-wing members — and accomplish other Republican goals. “Because the completion deadlines are upon us, a short continuing resolution is required to complete what House Republicans are working hard to achieve: an end to governance by omnibus, meaningful policy wins, and better stewardship of American tax dollars,” he said in a statement over the holiday weekend.

House conservatives don’t see it that way. They have pressured Johnson to back out of the deal he made with Schumer and press for border policy changes and steeper spending cuts. On Sunday, they quickly slammed the stopgap bill. “The @HouseGOP is planning to pass a short-term spending bill continuing Pelosi levels with Biden policies, to buy time to pass longer-term spending bills at Pelosi levels with Biden policies,” the right-wing House Freedom Caucus posted on social media Sunday night. “This is what surrender looks like.”

With hardliners opposed to the stopgap, House passage of the bill will have to happen via a process requiring a two-thirds majority. Most of those votes will have to come from Democrats, though Johnson reportedly hopes to have the support of a majority of his 218 members.

The bottom line: This would be the third stopgap spending bill that Congress has passed since September. We should be on track to avoid any prolonged shutdown.