WASHINGTON — Congress faces a Dec. 20 deadline to fund the government and avoid a shutdown, and Speaker Mike Johnson says House Republicans will likely continue the fight into early 2025 instead of a one-off this year. to conclude a financing agreement for the entire year.
‘We’re running out of clocks. December 20 is the deadline. We still have hope that we can get that done, but if not, we will take a temporary measure, I think that would come into effect in the first half of next year and would give us the necessary time to get this to get done. Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.”
That would extend the deadline until early in President-elect Donald Trump’s second term. By then, Republicans will have taken control of the Senate from Democrats while retaining a slim majority in the House of Representatives, giving them more power over federal funding for the remainder of the budget year.
“That would ultimately be a good move because it would benefit the country — because you would have Republican control, and we would have a little more say in what those spending bills are,” Johnson said. “But the new reform agenda will begin in earnest once President Donald J. Trump takes office in January, and we have a full agenda to run.”
Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, which is charged with writing funding bills, said there is still no “topline” agreement between the parties on how much the government should spend.
He said it will likely be postponed next year, January or March, with sometime in March more likely.
“We met with the speaker earlier this week…he doesn’t think we can be done by the end of the year,” Aderholt said. “I’ll be very shocked if we do anything, if we get anything resolved by the end of the year.”
But other Republicans disagree with that approach and prefer to finalize the funding deal this year to avoid getting bogged down in it during Trump’s first 100 days. That’s typically when a president has maximum political capital and some Republican senators prefer to use that time to confirm his nominees and advance their legislative priorities, from tax cuts to border security.
“I’d rather do it this year,” Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., a member of the Appropriations Committee, said of a funding deal.
“I would like to clarify the situation so that we don’t have to deal with this again next year,” Boozman said. “Now that there is a new government, the confirmations will take a lot of time. So we’ll have to deal with that. And then we should actually be working on next year’s appropriations.”
But even if they continue the fight into early 2025, Republicans will not have full control over spending decisions. The government funding legislation is subject to the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which key Republicans have pledged to maintain. That means they will have to make a deal with Democrats, who currently control the Senate and want to approve full-year funding this year, not in 2025.
“There is no reason to delay further or to harm government agencies by forcing them to operate on autopilot for the next several months,” Senate President Patty Murray, D-Wash., who will become vice chairman in January, told reporters. “We need to pass full-year, bipartisan spending bills before the end of the year.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the new chair of the Appropriations Committee, told NBC News: “I think we can get a deal, and I think it’s very important that we give the new administration a clean slate and not indulge in have to worry about” the financing of this budget year.
But if Republican leaders were to introduce a stopgap bill (also known as a continuing resolution or “CR”) instead of a year-long deal, it’s likely Democrats would accept it to avoid a shutdown.
“We have supported CRs, I have supported CRs in the past. Let’s see what happens,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., No. 3 Democrat in the House of Representatives. “Mike Johnson has said very clearly that he will take his cues from the new president. That’s not new to this topic by the way, it’s something that has been consistent, so we’ll see what the new administration has to say about it, and what the attitude is from our colleagues across the aisle. is in the coming weeks.”
Some conservatives see another reason for delay: avoiding an “omnibus” bill before Christmas, combining all federal funding into one big last-minute package that they can’t thoroughly scrutinize.
“The Speaker has said he is against an omnibus. Many of us are against an omnibus. We don’t want to see a drag from big spending bills,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who said there is a good chance Congress will pass a continuing resolution “early in the year, in March” of 2025.
“The bottom line is we need to keep spending under control and not allow a runaway spending bill to happen in December,” he said.
Boozman added that if Congress waits too long to pass a full-year funding bill, it could force automatic cuts to military and other programs that were baked into the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
“The other thing is it will cause defense cuts, which I think is a concern for many members,” he said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
