WASHINGTON — Congress is on track to pass a bill this week that will give lawmakers until mid-December to negotiate a deal on annual government funding bills that should take effect before the end of this month.
The stopgap bill, also known as a continuing resolution, has the broad bipartisan support it needs to advance through votes in the House and Senate this week. However, senators must reach an agreement before the Oct. 1 federal spending deadline to vote on the bill as it expires.
The 49-page bill, The legislation, released Sunday after weeks of deadlock as House Republicans went it alone, is no guarantee that Congress will actually complete its work on full-year bills in the next 12 weeks through the end of this congressional session, since lawmakers can pass as much emergency spending as they want.
Continuing resolutions essentially extend current spending levels and policies for a specific period of time. They are intended to give the House and Senate additional time to discuss the final versions of the dozen budget bills for the entire year.
Election on November 5th and the lame duck
The election results will likely determine whether the Republican House and Democratic Senate try to reach agreement on full-year bills during the lame-duck session that begins after Election Day, or whether they defer the matter to the next Year shift when the balance sheet stands of power could be significantly different.
Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, appears inclined to finish work on the full-year budget bills in December, saying during a news conference Tuesday that lawmakers would address funding decisions during the lame-duck session.
Johnson indicated that he would try to move all of the final spending bills discussed at the conference through the floor one at a time, rather than bundling all 12 into an omnibus or packing several bills together into a so-called minibus. Such immense bills regularly face resistance from conservative Republicans.
“We have broken the Christmas omnibus and I have no intention of returning to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said. “We don’t want buses, we won’t do buses.”
The stopgap bill, which Congress is expected to pass this week, would set the next federal funding deadline for Dec. 20, four days before Christmas.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are fighting
Johnson also blamed Senate Democrats for Congress’ failure to complete work on government funding legislation for the year, arguing that the House had done all its work.
The Senate Budget Committee approved 11 of the dozen budget bills with largely bipartisan votes, but failed to reach consensus on the homeland security spending bill.
None of those bills have been brought up for a vote in the Senate, in part because it can take weeks for spending bills to move through the amendment process in that chamber.
The House Appropriations Committee tabled its dozens of bills on party-line votes, without the Democratic support needed for the bills to actually become law in a divided government.
House Republican leaders passed five of the bills in the House, including Defense, Homeland Security, Homeland Security, Military Construction-VA and State-Foreign Operations.
House Republican leaders tried to pass the legislative bill, which would provide funding for Congress and its affiliated agencies, but were unsuccessful. House rules allow this chamber to debate and vote on bills in a matter of hours, much faster than the days or weeks it often takes the Senate to do so.
Neither Senate leaders nor House leadership have made any effort to discuss full-year budget legislation, a process necessary to arrive at the bipartisan, bicameral versions that must pass if Congress prevents it wants another emergency solution law to be passed in December.
The process typically takes at least six weeks, and with both chambers set to leave town for a six-week recess later this week, there likely won’t be enough time to discuss all bills before the mid-December deadline set by the rolling resolution.
“Stay away from poison pills”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Johnson for this I’m trying to pass a six-month stopgap bill Earlier this month it passed the House floor saying it was a waste of time.
That law, which did not gain the support necessary for passage, included a Republican Party bill that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote.
“If both sides continue to work together, if we stay away from poison pills and partisan spectacles, the American people can be assured that there will be no government shutdown,” Schumer said. “But we still have a lot of work to do.”
The Biden administration signaled its support for the stopgap spending bill on Tuesday, releasing one Administrative Policy Statement Calls for “quick passage of this bill in both houses of Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary government shutdown and ensure there is sufficient time to pass the full-year 2025 budget proposals later this year.”
