House GOP leaders are aiming to pass a stopgap spending bill this week that funds the government through Nov. 20, GOP sources told The Hill, as lawmakers face an end-of-the-month shutdown deadline.
Text of the continuing resolution (CR) has yet to be released, though Republicans have said it will largely be “clean.”
House leaders face a tight time crunch to pass the plan by the week’s end, with lawmakers scheduled to leave Washington next week for the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
The strategy, however, sets up a showdown with Democrats who have called for any stopgap to include major concessions on health care as a condition of their votes.
“Partisan legislation that continues the unprecedented Republican assault on healthcare is not a clean spending bill. It’s a dirty one,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) wrote on X on Monday.
That is raising the likelihood of Republicans having to pass the CR in the House without relying on Democratic votes, before daring Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reject the measure and head to a shutdown, as they did in March.
But first GOP leaders must contend with their slim majority in the House, where GOP leaders can only afford to lose two votes if all Democrats vote no.
The CR plan is facing criticism from several House Republicans responding to reports about the CR plan in Politico, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who said on X that Congress “should not pass a CR” and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) who said that she does not want a stopgap to end right before the Thanksgiving holiday, expressing worries about an omnibus.
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) wrote on X that, “I already hated status quo thinking and approaches (soft incrementalism at best), so I’m out on another CR for the sake of more government.”
At the same time, the National Republican Congressional Committee is putting pressure on vulnerable House Democrats to support the CR plan with a paid ad campaign against 25 members that warns of Democrats threatening to “sabotage” President Trump’s policies with a shutdown.
Top appropriators have said in recent days that they’re working through a list of requested add-ons, or “anomalies,” from the White House to attach to the forthcoming stopgap plan.
“We’re working through it, but we don’t want, don’t intend, to put anything on there that we can’t agree with,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told The Hill last Thursday, adding the goal is not to “put anything on there that we can’t agree with” or is “that’s offensive” and threaten chances of passage.
“We’re not trying to have a confrontation over CR. We’re trying to pass a CR,” he said.
Included in the list of requests lawmakers are sorting through is a reported ask from the White House for a $58 million security boost for government officials made in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk.
The Hill has reached out to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for comment.
Members on both sides of the aisle have pressed for more resources for security in the days since the shooting as fears over political violence have been on the rise.
Additionally, the House has been making a push to start formally conferencing the annual legislative branch funding bill with the Senate this month.
Congressional appropriators had previously pushed to attach the bill to a short-term CR to keep the government open on Oct. 1. But those hopes have dimmed as Congress faces a small window to strike a bipartisan deal to avert a shutdown, with partisan tensions over spending and healthcare heating up in Washington.
Cole said Thursday that both sides were not “not far apart” in funding talks to conference three bills covering the legislative branch, as well as the departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Agriculture (USDA).
“But it’s also hard to do in the amount of time we have, because I think it’ll probably have to be done by the end of next week,” Cole said Thursday. “Can’t do something like this and have members show up and not have a chance to explain it.”
