Bipartisan deal looks to punt shutdown threat into December

Congressional leaders have reached a deal to keep federal agencies funded through mid-December, announcing plans to vote this week on a bill to avert a shutdown that would otherwise take place next week.

The agreement, announced by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday, comes after House Republicans for weeks suggested they would not back a short-term funding measure unless congressional Democrats and the White House agreed to certain partisan demands. The continuing resolution, which would keep agencies funded through Dec. 20, will likely receive bipartisan support but can still fall victim to individual lawmakers disrupting it from reaching President Joe Biden’s desk on an expedited timeline.

Johnson agreeing to a stopgap continuing resolution without added provisions comes over the objections of former President Donald Trump, who instructed Republicans to reject any funding deal if it did not include legislative provisions to address his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voting from noncitizens. The House voted last week on a six-month funding proposal that included the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, but more than a dozen Republicans joined Democrats in defeating it.

“Since we fell a bit short of the goal line, an alternative plan is now required,” Johnson said, adding the continuing resolution would be “clean” and prevent the Democratic-controlled Senate from forcing the House to vote on a stopgap that included billions of dollars in new provisions. “Our legislation will be a very narrow, bare-bones CR including only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

Indeed, the proposed bill largely continues funding for agencies at their fiscal 2024 levels, and spares states and cities, who have grown all-too-familiar with these last-minute deals to avert a shutdown, from the prospect that federal workers residing in their jurisdictions would be furloughed without pay, which mayors worry would damage local economies. 

For counties, which run one-third of the nation’s airports, the deal delays fears that Transportation Security Administration employees working without pay would call out of work and cause air travel delays.

And perhaps most significantly for state and local agencies—especially at a time when federal data indicates that food insecurity is on the rise—the bill extends funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) at the “rate for operations necessary to maintain participation.”

Unsurprisingly, the bill does not extend the 2018 farm bill, which is also set to expire Sept. 30.

The bill also includes $231 million for the U.S. Secret Service to fund its protective mission. The agency has faced additional scrutiny and pressure to ramp up its efforts after two failed assassination attempts on Trump in recent months. The measure also prevents agencies from furloughing or terminating employees due to budget shortfalls, includes additional funds for the Office of Personnel Management to set up a new health benefits program for the U.S. Postal Service and adds spending for transition activities at the White House, General Services Administration and the National Archives and Records Administration.

The three-month stopgap excludes $10 billion in additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund, which had been in earlier versions of the bill. But House GOP leadership aides told The Hill that the continuing resolution does allow the agency to use the fund’s resources faster for disaster response for the roughly three-month span.

The aides told the outlet that the amount is “more than adequate for the two and a half month period,” and that “further conversations” will continue in the coming months on the matter.

Johnson explained that, as many House and Senate Republicans have warned in recent weeks, the agreement was the only “prudent path forward” as it would be an “act of political malpractice” to allow a shutdown to occur so close to a presidential election.

Last week, Trump posted on Truth Social that Republicans “should not agree to a continuing resolution in any way, shape, or form” if it did not include the SAVE Act.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the agreement came together after four days of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.

“While I am pleased bipartisan negotiations quickly led to a government funding agreement free of cuts and poison pills, this same agreement could have been done two weeks ago,” Schumer said. “Instead, Speaker Johnson chose to follow the MAGA way and wasted precious time.”

Now, Schumer added, Congress must act quickly to wrap up its work on the stopgap this week. “The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation, in both chambers,” he said.

If Congress is able to get the bill to Biden’s desk before Oct. 1, it will then face a new deadline just before the holidays. Focus will turn to full-year funding measures after the election, though the House and Senate remain deeply divided on a path forward. The House has passed six of the 12 required annual spending bills, though it has done so in party-line votes and at spending levels below what Republicans and the White House previously agreed to as part of a two-year budget deal. The Senate has passed 11 of its 12 bills using higher funding totals in overwhelmingly bipartisan votes at the committee level, though none have been approved on the floor.

“There are so many urgent national priorities that still must be addressed in our full-year funding bills,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, said. “I will be working closely with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure we get the job done before the end of the year.”

Additional reporting by Elizabeth Daigneau.