The House on Tuesday easily passed a bill to prevent a potential government shutdown just weeks before the November elections.
The measure, called a continuing resolution, provides funding for the federal government from the beginning of the new fiscal year on October 1 through December 11, postponing a spending fight until after voters have determined who will control Congress for the final two years of President Trump’s term.
House lawmakers approved the bill in a broadly bipartisan vote, 370 to 48. The Senate had approved it last month, so the House action sends the continuing resolution to Trump’s desk well ahead of a funding deadline at the end of the month.
“Today’s vote is the culmination of House Republicans moving proactively, decisively, and strategically earlier this summer,” Rep. Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said after the vote. “The action we took paved the way for the Senate to promptly engage in the process, and I am proud to say we are now sending this funding extension to President Trump without waiting for the clock to run out.”
Hard-line Republicans threaten again: Yet, as has so often been the case with this Congress, the House vote wasn’t without drama. A handful of GOP rebels threatened to oppose a procedural vote setting up legislative action for the rest of the week on four measures, including a GOP resolution condemning socialism. If that rule vote failed, it would once again embarrass Republican leaders and leave lawmakers with little to do in the near term.
Some Republican holdouts objected to the process used to pass the funding bill, which was considered under suspension of the rules and thus required a two-thirds majority to pass. Some objected to elements of the funding bill itself, most notably a White House-backed delay of a federal ban on the sale of intoxicating hemp products.
Democrats also insisted that the bill not include additional funding for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which they have opposed, and temporarily blocked a Trump administration proposal to give political appointees power over the federal grant-making process.
Two Democrats help save GOP bills: In the end, five Republicans voted no: Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy and Pete Sessions of Texas. That would have been enough to have the vote fail, but two Democrats — Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — joined with the remaining Republicans and one independent (who caucuses with Republicans) to narrowly approve the rule by a margin of 210 to 208. The votes by Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez were highly unusual, given that lawmakers in the minority party typically vote as a bloc against the majority party’s rules, even if they back the underlying legislation.
Instead of Speaker Mike Johnson suffering a stinging defeat, it was House Democratic leaders trying to explain how they got blindsided by two of their own members.
“I didn’t get a heads up. You’ll have to talk to Katherine,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters, referring to Katherine Clark, the House minority whip.
“That came as a surprise,” Clark reportedly said after the vote.
Former Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she was disappointed by the vote. “Voting for the rule is something that I, as Speaker, we never — we didn't even consider that anybody would do that,” she said. “We never had that problem. So I'm disappointed that they did that.”
The bottom line: There won’t be a government shutdown in October, and the fight over full-year funding for fiscal year 2027 has been postponed until after the elections, when both parties hope to secure more leverage to push their priorities.