Congress Passes Bill Keeping Government Open as Border, Spending Fights Rage

Congress cleared legislation extending government funding into March, a step that ensures federal workers will remain on the job but does nothing to alleviate underlying political pressures stemming from high U.S. debt levels, record crossings at the southern border and an enduring war in Ukraine.

The Senate passed the measure 77-18, followed by House approval, 314-108. The two votes send the measure to President Biden’s desk with time to spare ahead of the weekend deadline. In a replay of recent votes that underscore the fragility of the GOP majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) relied heavily on Democrats to bring the continuing resolution across the finish line, with almost half of Republicans declining to back the measure.

The day marked the latest turn in a long-running fight that has hobbled Congress and carved divisions through the Republican Party, with conservatives digging in on their demands for deep cuts as a condition for agreeing to back funding the government but being rebuffed by party leaders.

Federal operations have been running on a series of continuing resolutions since Oct. 1, after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) bucked spending hawks and put a surprise continuing resolution on the floor, only to lose his job when a bloc of Republicans engineered his ouster, in part over that decision.

Thursday’s bill provides funding for the Transportation Department, the Energy Department, Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration, and Veterans Affairs and military construction through March 1. The rest of the government would be funded through March 8. Under current law, funding was set to run out on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2, respectively.

The extension is designed to give congressional leaders time to hammer out full-year fiscal 2024 spending bills with an overall price tag of $1.66 trillion, a level agreed to earlier this month by leaders of both parties.

“Avoiding a shutdown is very good news for every American,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). ”No chaos, no spectacle, no shutdown,” he said.

The relative speed of passage Thursday—the votes occurred within three hours of each other—masked the turmoil gripping Congress more broadly. Senate negotiators are working to reach a deal on tightening U.S. border security, which Republicans demanded as a condition of supporting a stalled $110.5 billion foreign-aid package that includes assistance for Ukraine.

Biden hosted lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday, with attendees saying talks were productive and floating the idea of a possible vote on a combined border-Ukraine bill in the Senate next week. But House Republicans have remained skeptical of any deal that falls short of the border bill they passed last year with no Democratic support.

Former President Donald Trump, the front-runner in the 2024 GOP race, stirred up those sentiments on social media, saying that Republicans should not do a border deal “at all” unless they could get “everything needed to shut down” migration at the border.

“He’s going to be the presidential nominee,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), who voted against the bill. “It’s time for all Republicans—Senate and in the House—to get behind his policies. Those are policies that we should be reflecting in our bills and in our votes on the House floor.”

Meanwhile, Johnson has continued to grapple with the restive conservative wing of his conference that wanted to impose spending cuts or extract a win on border policy as a condition for funding the government. In the vote Thursday, 107 Republicans backed the stopgap bill, with 106 voting against it and seven not voting. Johnson didn’t respond to reporters’ questions after the vote.

Conservatives are unhappy that after winning control of the House in 2022, they have been unable to reverse a nearly $1.7 trillion fiscal 2023 spending law passed while Democrats had full control of Congress. Last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act, which nominally set spending at $1.59 trillion in fiscal 2023, was enacted after McCarthy and Biden made a handshake agreement to spend an additional $69 billion beyond what was written into statute. Hard-line Republicans are angered that Johnson went on to honor that handshake deal.

“It doesn’t matter who is sitting in the speaker’s seat or who has the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas), a leader of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus.

Democrats said some House Republicans have needlessly dragged the government to the brink of shutdowns. “ENOUGH with the MAGA brinksmanship!” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) on social media.

Because of hard-liners’ opposition to another continuing resolution, which locks in both the prior year’s spending levels and priorities, Johnson put the bill on the floor under procedures requiring two-thirds of House votes. By doing so, he bypasses the need for a procedural vote that GOP dissidents would likely block but will now has to lean heavily on Democratic support just as McCarthy did—never a good look for a Republican leader.

“While there may be a Republican majority on paper, more than 200 Democrats will be needed to keep the government’s lights on,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. She said she hopes the extension will be the last one needed to allow lawmakers to finalize the federal budget.

Freedom Caucus members on Thursday tried to get an amendment vote to attach a House-passed border-security bill to the continuing resolution. But Johnson’s office shot down that effort.

“Our speaker, Mr. Johnson, said he was the most conservative speaker we’ve ever had, and yet here we are putting this bill on the floor this afternoon without conservative policy riders,” complained Rep. Eli Crane (R., Ariz.). “Talk is cheap. The American people deserve better.”

Other Republicans regularly remind their colleagues that the GOP controls only the House and not the Senate or the White House, and that expectations need to be set accordingly.

“I’m starting to get fed up,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R., Fla.), a longtime member of the appropriations committee. “There’s a small group that’s just always going to have to be critical because that’s how they get exposure.”

Johnson has limited ability to accommodate such infighting if he is to eke out Republican wins because his small margins—two Republicans are absent for health reasons, cutting into his already narrow 220-213 majority—force him to keep nearly all Republicans together to pass legislation without Democratic help. Even then, he still must contend with a Democratic-controlled Senate.

“We’re not going to get everything that we want,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “But we’re going to stick to our core conservative principles. We’re going to advance fiscal stewardship.”

Write to Siobhan Hughes at [email protected], Katy Stech Ferek at [email protected] and Lindsay Wise at [email protected]