House Republicans pass bill to avert government shutdown

The House on Tuesday passed a funding bill to avert an end-of-the-week government shutdown, teeing up the measure for consideration in the Senate.

The chamber cleared the continuing resolution (CR) in a largely party-line 217-213 vote, with just one Democrat — Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) — bucking his party’s leaders to back the measure. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was the lone GOP “no” vote.

The legislation would fund the government through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, while boosting funds for defense programs and imposing cuts to nondefense funding. Current funding expires at 11:59 p.m. Friday.

“This was a big vote on the House floor, the Republicans stood together and we had one Democrat vote with us to do the right thing, and that is to fund the government,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said after the vote.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where its future hangs in the balance.

While several Senate Democrats have slammed the legislation — raising concerns about spending cuts included and instead pitching a shorter stopgap to allow more time for bipartisan negotiations on full-year bills — a number of vulnerable members are withholding judgment, weighing their concerns with the bill against the political reality of potentially forcing a shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), for his part, has walked a careful line when it comes to the politically prickly vote. Asked about the House GOP stopgap bill shortly before Tuesday’s vote in the lower chamber, he was coy.

“We’re going to wait to see what the House does first,” the top Democrat told reporters.

Passage of the stopgap in the House puts a pin on the first funding fight of Trump’s second term in the lower chamber, which largely revolved around the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), overseen by Elon Musk.

Republicans — many of whom are typically averse to continuing resolutions (CR) — rallied around the stopgap in the name of allowing DOGE to continue its work in reducing the size of the government. Democrats demanded, albeit unsuccessfully, to include language that would limit the DOGE’s power.

The successful vote marks a massive victory for Johnson, who unveiled the bill over the weekend, convinced nearly a dozen GOP holdouts to support the legislation, and ultimately muscled the CR through his razor-thin majority.

The near-unanimous Republican support for the legislation came together in the final hours before the vote, with a handful of hard-line conservatives who expressed opposition to the bill ultimately throwing their support behind the effort. And in a significant boost, the House Freedom Caucus, which typically opposes stopgaps, formally backed the legislation.

“President Trump and Republicans in Congress will stop at nothing to deliver on that agenda,” Johnson told reporters following the vote. “We are gonna continue to work hard, we will continue to stick together and get this job done, and it’s an essential one.”

Approval of the measure is also a win for President Trump, who endorsed the stopgap and spoke with GOP opponents in the final hours before the vote, helping to flip the holdouts and get the measure over the finish line. Additionally, Vice President Vance talked to House Republicans during their closed-door conference meeting Tuesday morning, delivering a final pitch in support of the legislation.

“I spoke with @POTUS earlier today. Voting for a CR goes against every bone in my body, but I am placing my full trust in the President’s long-term commitment to getting our fiscal house in order,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) wrote on X.

The bill’s passage in the House is the culmination of a months-long effort in the lower chamber to settle spending for fiscal 2025, which has included two stopgaps and extensive negotiations.

Top appropriators worked behind the scenes to strike a deal on top-line numbers for the 12 spending bills to no avail.

Democrats, concerned about DOGE’s cuts to large swaths of the government, demanded language that would require Trump to direct funds as appropriated by Congress, which was a nonstarter for Republicans.

At the same time, Republican leadership faced growing pressure from its right flank for more aggressive action to curb government spending. Some hard-line conservatives, including Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), also warned last month that his support for a larger, multitrillion-dollar package to cut taxes and spending would be contingent upon how much funding increased under a bipartisan spending deal for fiscal 2025.

Republicans have touted the measure ultimately passed Tuesday as a “clean” continuing resolution that increases defense spending while keeping overall spending close to fiscal 2024 levels. Republicans say the bill would also give the Defense Department flexibility to start new programs and move funds around.

At the same time, Republicans have highlighted additional funding for the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, or WIC, already authorized pay increases for junior enlisted military personnel and increases to support air traffic control efforts.

However, Democrats in both chambers strongly opposed the bill, accusing Republicans of shortchanging programs and agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, nuclear weapons proliferation programs, agricultural research efforts and some farmer assistance at the United States Department of Agriculture. The bill would also yank back another $20 billion for the Internal Revenue Service.

Democratic criticism has extended beyond the Capitol, as D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) and local officials have also sounded alarm over what they’ve described as an omission of a long-standing provision that would allow the district to continue spending at its local budget levels for fiscal 2025.

Bowser has said the plan would “immediately have the effect of cutting $1 billion” out of D.C.’s budget. But it remains unclear whether the move was intentional. 

Asked about the claims on Monday, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told The Hill “a lot of that stuff, again, was inaugural stuff,” but he added that he has “to go through and look at it in more detail than I have.”

“I’m sorry if everything wasn’t perfect, and I’m sorry the Democrats weren’t on the table to talk to us, but it just is what it is.”