WASHINGTON — The House plans to vote this week on a three-month stopgap funding bill as the clock ticks down and Donald Trump pressures Republicans to shut down the government without policy concessions they have no realistic chance of achieving.
Defying Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., struck a deal with the White House and top Democrats on Sunday that calls for keeping the government funded at current levels through Dec. 20 but strips out a provision Trump demanded that would revise election law nationwide to require proof of citizenship to vote.
As the House adjourned for the week Friday, Johnson declined to say whether Trump, whom he has regularly consulted during the funding fight, would be OK with moving a package without the citizenship voting component, known as the SAVE Act. Trump and Johnson met for three hours at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s residence in Florida, last week right after a second apparent assassination attempt on Trump, and they met again in Washington on Thursday.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with President Trump,” Johnson told reporters. “I won’t divulge all of that, but he understands the situation that we’re in. He is doggedly determined to ensure that election security remains a top priority, and I am as well, which is why I put the SAVE Act with the CR.”
The federal government will shut down at 12:01 a.m. Oct. 1 unless Congress can pass a short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR. Both President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D.N.Y., expressed support for the CR released Sunday and urged the House to pass it quickly.
“If both sides continue to work in good faith, I am hopeful that we can wrap up work on the CR this week, well before the September 30 deadline," Schumer said in a statement Sunday. "The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation, in both chambers.”
Last week, 14 House Republicans teamed with nearly all Democrats to torpedo a six-month funding bill that included the SAVE Act. That embarrassing failure for Republicans allowed bipartisan House and Senate negotiators to begin crafting a “clean” CR with no controversial provisions attached to it.
Johnson on Sunday revealed the text of the new CR, which would keep the government open through Dec. 20, getting Congress past the contentious election and buying members more time to strike a longer-term funding deal for fiscal year 2025 before they leave for the holidays.
The House plans to take up the CR by midweek. While it does not include the SAVE Act, the short-term bill includes $231 million in additional money for the Secret Service after the latest apparent attempt on Trump's life on Sept. 15.
Johnson and other GOP leaders are pleading with their party not to allow a shutdown just five weeks before Election Day, which would be unprecedented in modern times. Swing-district Republicans say it would be a terrible move, as voters would most likely blame their party.
“It’s, in my opinion, galactically stupid to do a government shutdown even after an election. Before an election, it’s even worse. It’s self-immolating as a party if we do that right before an election,” said Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., who represents one of several dozen competitive districts that could decide the House majority. “So we should not shut the government down.”
Asked whether Trump is making it harder to avert a shutdown, Garcia said it’s up to Johnson.
“The dynamics of all that, it’s between him and the speaker,” he said. “And the speaker’s got to call his play.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who also faces a competitive race, said: “Shutting down the government is bad politics, bad governance.”
Johnson's CR should sail through the House — with backing from a large number of Republicans and Democrats. But there is still a faction of conservatives who vow to vote no.
"If it's a clean CR into the lame duck, I'm not going to be supporting it," said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., a Trump ally and member of the far-right Freedom Caucus. "This issue should be pushed to next year so the next president can, with his or her team, can figure out how we're going to manage the nation's finances going forward."
Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, took steps last week to tee up a vote on a government funding bill, preparing the Senate to step in if Republicans in the House flame out again.
“Sadly, time is not a luxury that Congress has right now,” Schumer said on the floor Thursday. “And instead of doing the bipartisan work everyone knows is required for avoiding a shutdown, the House Republican leadership has wasted two weeks — two weeks — listening to Donald Trump’s ridiculous claims on the campaign trail.”
But Sunday, Schumer sounded much more optimistic, telling reporters he’d been sitting down with Johnson “for the last four days” and believed they were “coming closer to an agreement.”
“We really now have some good news. There’s a really good chance we can avoid the government shutdown,” he said.
Some Republicans had pushed for the House to act quickly, worried that a funding bill passed by the Democratic-led Senate could be loaded up with extraneous spending.
“We’re afraid if it comes up in the Senate, there will be a whole lot of stuff on it, it will be very expensive and hard to pass” in the House, said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, an Appropriations Committee “cardinal” who leads one of the government-funding panel’s subcommittees.
If Congress passes the new House CR before the Oct. 1 deadline, another shutdown fight will await it in December. Advocates for the new Dec. 20 deadline hope its proximity to Christmas and Congress' final workday of the year will encourage members to work quickly across party lines.
