Congress Passes Bill to Avert Government Shutdown

WASHINGTON—Congress approved a temporary spending bill to prevent a partial government shutdown this weekend, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) forced once again to turn to a coalition made up mostly of Democrats to clear it in the House, followed by passage in the Senate.

The Thursday afternoon House vote was 320 to 99, with slightly more than half of Republicans joining with almost all Democrats to support the measure. The Democratic-led Senate passed the bill 77-13 Thursday evening. Now it heads to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

“I am happy to inform the American people that there will be no government shutdown on Friday,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.). “And now, let’s finish the job of funding the government so we don’t have to do this again,” he added, referring to funding all of fiscal year 2024.

Some House Republicans had emerged from a closed-door meeting ahead of the vote saying they were frustrated that Johnson was asking them to support another deadline extension without more spending cuts or other conservative victories. Thursday’s stopgap measure was the third passed with Democrats during Johnson’s speakership, and will buy negotiators more time to then pass full-year spending bills next month, under a framework agreed with Democrats.

The disunity among Republicans means Johnson had to bypass normal procedures and instead bring the bill to the floor using a special approach that requires a two-thirds supermajority, rather than a simple majority.

In the vote, most Republicans backed the speaker, with 113 GOP lawmakers supporting the short-term deal and 97 voting against it. On the Democratic side, all but two lawmakers—Reps. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Mike Quigley of Illinois who are protesting the lack of funding for Ukraine—voted in favor of the measure.

“This has been a long, deliberate process,” Johnson told reporters on Thursday before the vote, calling the appropriations process “ugly.” He said he was anxious to get started on next year’s bills and try to get them done by summer, avoiding similar stopgap bills and shutdown dramas next fall.

“We’re going to do everything we can to turn the aircraft carrier around,” he said.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), who voted against the deadline extensions, said Johnson hasn’t worked hard enough to cut spending and that he squandered House Republicans’ sole source of leverage by being unwilling to shut down the government.

“You basically emasculate your leverage when you say, ‘We’ll never do a government shutdown,’ ” he said.

Lawmakers needed to get the extension into law before funding for some government departments expires after Friday.

A divided Congress has spent months struggling to complete the 12 bills that set fiscal-year 2024 spending levels for federal agencies, punting several times. But lawmakers said they now have the finish line in sight.

Johnson and other top congressional leaders on Wednesday said they had agreed in principle on the substance of half the bills. They said another short-term extension would be needed until March 8 to give lawmakers adequate time for drafting and reviewing text for the first six, and for finishing negotiations on the rest by March 22. The leaders said the fiscal-year 2024 spending levels in those bills would adhere to the bipartisan agreement reached last year, tied to a deal raising the federal government’s debt ceiling.

“Here we go again. Senators of both parties will once again kick the can down the road,” Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said ahead of the Senate vote. “Our national debt is over $34 trillion and growing at an alarming rate.”

Stopgap bills “are bad, I don’t like it, but it’s even worse to shut the government down,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.). “The good thing is we’ve got an agreement. I see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

In November, Johnson promised not to do any more short-term spending patches. But his historically thin margin has forced him to abandon that pledge several times. Republicans’ House majority stands at 219-213, after Rep. Tom Suozzi (D., N.Y), who won a special election, was sworn in to fill the seat held by expelled former Rep. George Santos (R., N.Y.).

Since Johnson can afford to lose no more than two votes on party-line bills, he has turned to Democrats to help him pass five major bills at a two-thirds threshold: two previous stopgap spending bills; the annual defense-policy bill; a temporary reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration; and a bipartisan tax bill.

The willingness of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to pass a stopgap bill with Democratic votes in September triggered the rebellion that led to his removal in early October, when eight Republicans voted with all Democrats to oust him.

Some House Republicans are still hoping to persuade Johnson to adopt an alternative strategy: passing a long-term temporary spending measure that would keep federal money flowing until Sept. 30. Automatic spending cuts would then kick in on April 30 under the terms of a debt deal reached last year, which called for such cuts if the government was operating under a continuing resolution on that date.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) said he wants the long-term option that would trigger automatic cuts. “I’ve said that for over a year,” Jordan said.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that such a scenario would lead to federal agency budget cuts ranging from 5% to 9% for nondefense funding and from zero to 1% for defense funding.

Natalie Andrews contributed to this article.

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