Yahoo Finance Washington appears ready to take holiday break from government shutdown threats
The House of Representatives passed a bill that appears likely to keep the government open through the holiday season while simultaneously ensuring that spending fights quickly resume just after New Year's Day.
The final vote tally was 336-95 with scores of lawmakers from both parties voting in the affirmative. The 32-page plan was announced over the weekend by House Speaker Mike Johnson and now heads to the Senate where both Democrats and Republicans there have expressed openness to getting it passed.
The deal is likely to get to President Biden's desk before Friday night's shutdown deadline, sidestepping yet another self-imposed crisis. Lawmakers had been facing a possible government shutdown that, among many other effects, would have cut off the paychecks of TSA workers ahead of a busy holiday travel week.
"We are not going to have a massive omnibus spending bill right before Christmas," Johnson told reporters Tuesday before the vote, adding "that is a gift to the American people."
He muscled the bill to passage under what is known as a suspension of the rules. It allowed him to limit floor debate and bypass the House Rules Committee.
The deal will fund some areas of the federal government — places like the Agriculture and Transportation departments — until Jan. 19, 2024. Authorization for the remainder of Washington's bureaucracy is set to expire just two weeks later on Feb. 2.
The bill doesn't include Republican demands around things like immediate spending cuts, the reforms at the southern border, or funding for the IRS. It also doesn't address additional money for Israel or Ukraine.
Johnson's case
What the bill also accomplishes is to tee up Washington for another series of fights in the new year that Republicans like Johnson hope will turn out to be a climactic showdown over Washington's debt problem.
"We are not surrendering, we are fighting," Johnson said Tuesday as part of the case he has been making all week that GOP margins in the House of Representatives are too thin to press the issue now. Instead, he said, punting the issue for now will set Republicans up to have the strongest hand next year.
The idea is that House Republicans will have maximum leverage if a provision agreed to in this year’s debt-ceiling deal to cut all federal spending by 1% is pressing down on politically popular programs. Those across-the-board cuts would go into effect in 2024 if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach an agreement around the entire fiscal year.
"I'm done with short-term CRs," he added, promising that this bill — using the Washington parlance for continuing resolutions — would be the last one to fund the government at current levels on his watch.
But many of Johnson's far-right colleagues are skeptical of his promises, with more than 90 Republicans voting against him in Tuesday’s vote and the far-right House Freedom Caucus blasting the deal. The group said it was tired of promises to "roll over today to fight tomorrow."
On to the Senate
But even over the far-right objections, the proposal now appears to have an inside track at becoming law as it heads to a Senate where both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed an openness to considering the bill.
"I am pleased that Speaker Johnson seems to be moving in our direction by advancing a CR that doesn't include the highly partisan cuts that Democrats have warned against," Schumer said Tuesday of the proposal.
McConnell added that the bill is a "responsible measure that will keep the lights on" and pledged to push Republicans to support it.
While observers expect the ingredients are now in place to keep the government's lights on at least through the holiday season, the fact that Washington again narrowly averted a fiscal calamity will do little to quell the larger issues at play around the country’s debt problem.
Jeannette Lowe, Strategas Securities managing director of policy research, offered a reminder this week on Yahoo Finance that the last government shutdown deal wasn't enough to avoid Moody's rating agency issuing a warning about the US fiscal situation last week.
That warning, Lowe notes, is "one step closer to a credit downgrade."
Immediately following the vote, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said in a statement that averting a shutdown was a good thing but that Congress is "failing at one of its most basic responsibilities."
She added that "we need to get past this funding crisis so we can start looking at more than just the next step in front of us."
Political peril for Johnson
Tuesday's vote may also bring political peril for Johnson down the road after a similar deal and vote in September led to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's ouster.
Back in September, McCarthy oversaw a very similar vote with 335 lawmakers, including 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans, helping him get that deal passed. This week, it was 209 Democrats and 127 Republicans who joined together to pass the bill.
In a series of appearances Tuesday, Johnson tried to downplay the comparisons to McCarthy and underline the differences between their two situations. He argued that the unique structure of Tuesday's bill offers a paradigm shift for how Washington operates, telling Fox News of McCarthy's ouster that "the circumstances were different than they are right now."
Still, both the McCarthy deal in September and the Johnson bill this week keep the government funded at spending levels agreed to back in 2022, which far-right House Republicans love to say means keeping the government open at "Pelosi levels."
One of the leaders of the GOP opposition, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), repeatedly posted "#NoPelosiCR" on his social media accounts throughout the week.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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