Johnson rallies House for third shot at stopping shutdown – Washington Examiner
House Republicans are working on a last-minute deal to avoid a government shutdown by advancing three separate bills: one to extend government funding, another for disaster relief, and a third for farmers’ assistance. With the deadline approaching, they plan to vote on a bill to fund the government until mid-March. This new approach divides the previous combined proposal into three parts, which has drawn some opposition. Notably, the deal does not include President Trump’s request to suspend the debt ceiling for two years; instead, Congress will address the debt limit when it reconvenes next year. Lawmakers emphasize that details are still being finalized.
Johnson rallies House GOP for third shot at avoiding shutdown
House Republicans are planning to move forward with a last-minute deal to advance three separate single-subject bills to extend government funding and provide disaster relief, with lawmakers rushing to finalize a spending package hours before the shutdown deadline.
Lawmakers are poised to vote on a bill to fund the government until mid-March in addition to two separate measures to provide disaster relief as well as farmers’ assistance, multiple sources familiar with the plan told the Washington Examiner. That plan simply divides the latest CR proposal into three separate parts rather than advancing them all together in one bill, which prompted opposition from some lawmakers.
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However, the latest funding deal drops a demand from President-elect Donald Trump to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, instead entering an agreement they would deal with the debt limit when Congress reconvenes next year.
Lawmakers involved with talks say details are still fluid and that the package must still be discussed with the full GOP conference before it is moved forward. Republicans are set to meet in a closed-door conference meeting on Friday afternoon.
It’s not yet clear how House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) plans to move the new package through the House. He could advance it through the Rules Committee, which would then only require a simple majority vote on the floor to pass the lower chamber.
That way, Johnson wouldn’t need to rely on a significant number of Democrats, who in recent days have refused to support any funding package other than the original bipartisan spending deal that was scrapped earlier this week. However, Democrats could be warming up to the new idea, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told members in a closed-door caucus meeting on Friday morning that lines of communication have been reopened with GOP leadership — signaling some sort of cooperation.
However, not all Democrats said they’d be on board with stripping the CR into separate pieces.
“We have a compromise that’s on the table,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t know how separating all of these things is substantively different than passing them together. I would imagine if you’re separating them, that means that it’s they’re changing the language in them, so they’re trying to ask people if we’re gonna pass something that they’re not telling us, what’s inside, right? So the answer is no.”
Even if the single-subject bills manage to pass the House, it’s unclear how they would fare in the Senate. Lawmakers would likely need to negotiate some procedure to combine the separate bills into a single package for the Senate otherwise it could take days for senators to process the individual measures without unanimous consent.
The new funding proposal comes after members of the conservative Freedom Caucus met with Johnson and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance in the speaker’s office on Friday morning, particularly lawmakers who voted down Johnson’s short-term CR the night before.
After scrapping their initial funding bill that was negotiated by both parties in the House and Senate, House Republican leaders put forward their own proposal to keep the government open that included a measure to suspend the debt ceiling for two years — a provision that caught many lawmakers off guard, especially deficit hawks in the House who are staunchly opposed to raising the debt limit.
Those members were included in the meeting on Friday, likely resulting in the omission from the latest package. Instead, the speaker and rank-and-file members entered into a handshake agreement to enact spending cuts in exchange for a debt ceiling raise in Republicans’ first reconciliation package next year.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the first to suggest separating the main components of the funding package into separate bills to hold votes on each portion. Massie was involved in the closed-door negotiations on Friday.
Hailey Bullis and Marisa Schultz contributed to this story.
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