With current federal funding due to expire in 11 days, House Speaker Mike Johnson now says he wants Congress to pass a “clean” continuing resolution that would “freeze funding at current levels” through the end of the fiscal year in September. That would avoid a shutdown of government agencies — at least those not being targeted right now by Elon Musk’s DOGE effort.
The speaker had previously indicated he wanted to include the DOGE cuts in the current funding bill, but his new approach would have Republicans wait until the Fiscal Year 2026 budget to try to codify those cuts over the objections of Democrats.
“For FY26, for the next fiscal year, you're going to see a very different process and a lot more efficient and effective spending for the people,” Johnson said during an interview Sunday with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Before Republicans can get to that, though, they need help from Democrats to pass a funding bill for the rest of this fiscal year. Johnson said Democrats need to back off efforts to restrict Trump and DOGE. “Democrats have to help negotiate this, and they've to this point shown no interest in finding a reasonable solution,” he said, later adding: “They want to use government funding as some sort of weapon against President Trump and his administration, and that is not the way this is supposed to work.”
Democrats are reportedly pressing for guarantees that the Trump administration will spend funds as appropriated by Congress. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement Sunday that Democrats are ready to work with Republicans but “there has been zero outreach from the Trump administration and House Republicans have walked away from the negotiating table.”
What’s next: Republican leaders are reportedly looking to release the text of a stopgap spending bill this weekend.