House Speaker Mike Johnson proposes 2-step stopgap funding bill to avert government shutdown

Table Of Content

• Speaker Mike Johnson unveils plan to avert shutdown next week
• Lauren Boebert is her own best asset — and worst enemy — as she fights to stay in Congress
• McCarthy’s plan collapses, shutdown almost certain
• MORE: In scathing letter, GOP's Marjorie Taylor Greene slams Johnson with speakership under threat
• Furious Mexican farmers are ripping out water pumps for avocado orchards and berry fields, risking cartel reprisal

A handful of Senate Republicans said they would not agree unless there was also a vote on an amendment to defund the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-testing mandate for some workers. Led by Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Roger Marshall of Kansas, they also demanded that the amendment’s voting threshold be a simple majority of 51, rather than the usual 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Gaetz has been vocal in floating the possibility of using a motion to vacate against McCarthy over his handling of shutdown negotiations – a move that can trigger a House floor vote to oust the speaker. As House Democrats emerged from a closed door meeting before the vote, many told CNN they will support the GOP's short-term spending bill.

Speaker Mike Johnson unveils plan to avert shutdown next week

In the morning before Johnson made his statement, he met with about two dozen House Republicans, more of them centrist-leaning voices, urging him not to go back on his word and stick with the deal. As some Republicans from the Freedom Caucus again raise the threat of a motion to oust the speaker over the deal, other Republicans are furious they are starting 2024 with the same problems of governing. Democrats are still weighing how they will proceed and they are stalling for more time.

Lauren Boebert is her own best asset — and worst enemy — as she fights to stay in Congress

Speaker Johnson insists he's sticking to budget deal but announces no plan to stop partial shutdown - The Associated Press

Speaker Johnson insists he's sticking to budget deal but announces no plan to stop partial shutdown.

Posted: Fri, 12 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The money requested for infrastructure and other purposes, more than $2 trillion, would be spent over an eight-year period, starting with the coming fiscal year. The money for families is expected to add at least $1 trillion, also over a multiyear period. “We still haven’t seen a single page of the Pelosi-Schumer spending bill, and they’re expecting us to pass it by the end of this week," tweeted Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. “It’s insane." “We are now one step closer to protecting our democracy and preventing another January 6th," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. “The bitterness of winter has descended on Eastern Europe, and if our friends in Ukraine hope to triumph Russia, America must stand firmly on the side of our democratic friends abroad," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

McCarthy’s plan collapses, shutdown almost certain

Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter at cbsnews.com and is based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked for the Washington Examiner and The Hill, and was a member of the 2022 Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship with the National Press Foundation. "We are pausing on our plans to move forward on the Senate vehicle to allow the House to move first with their proposal," Schumer said of the delay. "I'm not going to make a judgment on what I'd veto and what I'd sign, let's wait and see what they come up with," Mr. Biden told reporters. A White House statement on Saturday condemning the bill as an "unserious proposal" stopped short of a veto threat. President Biden signaled Monday that he could be open to signing it if it passes Congress.

Speaker Johnson on GOP plan to avert government shutdown: 'Trust us' - The Washington Post

Speaker Johnson on GOP plan to avert government shutdown: 'Trust us'.

Posted: Tue, 07 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

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“Right now our plan is to continue to build support for our single-subject spending bills. This 45-day CR does not liberate us from our nation’s financial challenges,” he added, using an abbreviation for "continuing resolution," which is the term used for the stopgap measure. The potential backtracking from the deal, which essentially hews to the bargain to suspend the debt ceiling that President Biden struck last year with Kevin McCarthy, the speaker at the time, caught senators by surprise. Democrats said they would proceed with the deal they made with Mr. Johnson, and with a temporary spending patch — known as a continuing resolution, or C.R. — to buy more time past a Jan. 19 deadline to enact it without a partial government shutdown. Speaker Mike Johnson came under mounting pressure on Thursday from House G.O.P. hard-liners to renege on the spending deal he struck with Democrats over the weekend for avoiding a government shutdown, as ultraconservatives demanded he put forward a new plan with deeper cuts.

The Senate is expected to quickly approve the bill, which would allow President Biden to sign it into law before the deadline. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who chairs the city’s budget and finance committee, said Los Angeles isn’t seeing as much growth as officials would hope, nor do they have a flood of federal funds as in recent years. But it’s also not a crisis in which the city is on the verge of layoffs, he said. The budget request has no funding for Trump’s border wall but does include $1.2 billion for border security, including high-tech sensors to detect people crossing the border and new screening tools at ports. The budget increases would also respond to some of the immediate problems that the administration has been grappling with, including the nation’s troubled immigration system. It would include $861 million as a first installment in stepped-up aid to countries in Central America, part of the effort to address what Biden calls the “root causes” of migration to the U.S.

Six of the 12 annual spending bills will now need to be passed before the end of next week. The leaders said the one-week extension was necessary to allow the appropriations committees "adequate time to execute on this deal in principle" and give lawmakers time to review the package's text. Johnson's plan is a "laddered CR," a novel type of continuing resolution, the tool typically used by Congress to extend funding levels to keep the government running in lieu of an agreement on next year's federal budget. His two-step plan would extend operations until Jan. 19 for some agencies and until Feb. 2 for others while Congress negotiates long-term spending. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said Congress should move on from this year's spending fight by passing a one-year continuing resolution to fund the government through September. He wants lawmakers to shift their focus to approving next year's appropriations bills "and get that one right."

Even the failed plan, an extraordinary concession to immediately slash spending by one-third for many agencies, was not enough to satisfy the hard-right flank that has upturned his speakership. “We've transferred huge sums of money away from Democrats' spending wish list toward our national defense and armed forces, but without allowing the overall cost of the package to go higher," McConnell said. The legislation also includes historic revisions to federal election law that aim to prevent any future presidents or presidential candidates from trying to overturn an election. The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is in direct response to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Republican lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

The budget won’t be formally handed over to Blumenfield until late April, but he and his team have begun having informal conversations about it with the administration. That is the sexy part, or at least as sexy as anything involving several hundred pages of fiscal policy can be. The budget request would also add significantly to health programs, including $6.5 billion for a new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The agency would direct research aimed at finding better treatments for Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer, the latter reflecting Biden’s personal interest in cancer research. At the other end of the education ladder, the budget calls for a 6% increase in the maximum that college students can get under the Pell Grant program, which allows just under $6,200 for this academic year. Biden is asking for $14 billion in new funding to address global warming, an issue Trump disparaged.

Lawmakers are nearing completion of the 2023 spending package nearly three months late. It was supposed to be finished by last Oct. 1, when the government’s fiscal year began. Leahy argued against that approach in releasing the bill saying, “the choice is clear. We can either do our jobs and fund the government, or we can abandon our responsibilities without a real path forward."

The plan came together very quickly this morning, and Democratic lawmakers have said they don't trust the Republicans not to slip something they oppose into the bill, and that they won't vote on it "blindly." House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is currently using his unlimited amount of time, known as “magic minutes," to address the chamber. He demanded Republicans keep their word on their agreement with President Joe Biden on spending levels. In a one-page summary of the plan, Johnson's office said the approach would "prevent another irresponsible ‘Christmas omnibus’ spending monstrosity." The House Rules Committee met Monday afternoon to take up the bill, but it did not pass a rule to enable the bill to be debated on the floor. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the committee, was one of the first Republicans to come out against Johnson's plan. House Republicans who control the majority have disagreed about how to move forward, with some arguing for major spending cuts that would never win sign-offs from Biden and the Senate.