Washington — The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a stopgap measure to keep the government funded through September, as Speaker Mike Johnson works to muster GOP support for the measure days ahead of a possible government shutdown.
House Republican leadership unveiled the legislation on Saturday. It would increase defense spending, and includes additional funding for veterans’ health care, while decreasing non-defense spending below 2024 levels. The bill also includes more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The House Rules Committee advanced the measure late Monday, setting up a floor vote Tuesday afternoon.
Congress faces a deadline to fund the government by the end of the day Friday, and any bill that makes it out of the House will require Democratic support in the GOP-controlled Senate, where 60 votes are needed for passage.
House Republicans, with a razor-thin majority, are forging ahead on their own. The House Democratic leadership has expressed staunch opposition to the continuing resolution, saying the caucus “will not be complicit in the Republican effort to hurt the American people.”
“The Republican bill dramatically cuts healthcare, nutritional assistance for children and families, and veterans’ benefits,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a news conference with House Democratic leadership on Monday. “It is not something we could ever support.”
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Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the Democratic conference chair, said House Democrats “want to support a bipartisan piece of legislation,” urging House Republicans to work with Democrats.
“But they have so far been unable and unwilling to do that,” Aguilar said.
With narrow Republican majorities in the House in recent years, Democrats have repeatedly helped prevent a government shutdown. And historically, the effort to get government funding over the finish line has been a bipartisan one. But many Democrats have reservations about the GOP-led six-month stopgap measure, warning that it would give the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency even more latitude to carry out cost-slashing efforts.
Rather than negotiate with Democrats, House Republicans have opted to rely on GOP votes for passage — a tenuous strategy given the narrow Republican majority.
One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie, is stalwart in his opposition to the continuing resolution — even amid a primary threat from President Trump, who dangled the threat in a post on Truth Social on Monday while pledging to “lead the charge against him.”
Given Massie’s opposition, House Republicans can’t afford to lose any additional votes if all members are present and voting. And a number of GOP members remain on the fence about the measure. The president has been making calls to potential GOP holdouts on the continuing resolution, a White House official confirmed to CBS News.
Still, Johnson told reporters Monday night that he’s confident that the measure will have the votes, arguing that for Democrats, “there’s zero reason for them not to support it.”
“I think it’s pretty shameful that they’re instructing their members not to,” the speaker added.
Johnson saw relief Monday night when the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-liners who often oppose continuing resolutions on principle, said its members would back the stopgap funding measure.
“Contrary to Congress’ longtime abuse of this legislative tool, this CR is a paradigm shift,” the group said in a statement.
The group touted in the statement that the stopgap bill would eliminate the need for an omnibus bill, a massive package filled with earmarks that lawmakers often turn to under time pressure to fund the government. And they argued in their statement that the temporary funding measure will “reduce and then freeze spending for the next six months to allow President Trump and his Administration to continue their critical work within the Executive Branch to find and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse.” Some of the hard-liners met with Mr. Trump last week at the White House.
With conservatives’ support, and possible pickup opportunities among Democrats who represent districts that Mr. Trump won in November’s election, a viable path to passage in the House does exist even if more Republicans buck party leaders. But the vote is expected to be a nail-biter for Johnson.
Should the House approve the measure, it would then go to the Senate, where support from a number of Democrats would be necessary to pass the continuing resolution and send it to the president’s desk. Though many Senate Democrats have spoken out against the stopgap measure, some have kept their powder dry — keeping the door open to preventing a shutdown if no other options are on the table.
If the House is unable to find the necessary support for the six-month continuing resolution, lawmakers could move to a shorter-term funding measure that would give appropriators more time to flesh out new spending bills. Democrats have signaled in recent days that they prefer the latter approach. The top Democratic appropriators, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, introduced a continuing resolution that would fund the government through April 11 on Monday. The bill would likely find wide bipartisan margins in both chambers, while frustrating conservatives.
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