Transition Live Updates: House Sends Stopgap Funding Bill to Senate Hours Ahead of Shutdown Deadline
"Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said it will likely pass quickly. The new legislation would keep the government open but did not include the debt ceiling increase that President-elect Donald J. Trump had demanded.
Pinned
The House approved legislation on Friday to avert a federal government shutdown that was just hours away, with lawmakers extending funding into mid-March and approving disaster relief for parts of the nation still recovering from storms. The measure now goes to the Senate.
The House vote came after Republicans stripped out a provision sought by President-elect Donald J. Trump to suspend the federal debt limit and spare him the usually politically difficult task of doing so when he takes office. The debt measure incited a revolt by Republicans on Thursday and led to the defeat of Speaker Mike Johnson’s first attempt to extend government funding.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, said he expected the Senate to quickly take up the bill and pass it. “Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families — provide emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters, no debt ceiling, and it will keep the government open with no draconian cuts,” he said.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, says of House Democrats’ decision to bail out Republicans: “House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working class Americans all across the land. House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling.”
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolRepresentative Gerry Connolly of Virginia admitted that the bill that passed tonight did not include all the priorities that they had fought for in the original deal they negotiated with Republicans. But since the debt ceiling suspension was removed, there was nothing left to oppose besides the omissions.
“Was that a compelling reason to shut down the government?” Connolly said. “At the end of the day, no.”
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolRepresentative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the incoming top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said he was leaving the Capitol feeling “very unsettled” after the vote and the chaos that led up to it.
“I think we’re in for a lot of turbulence on the Republican side of the House because of the instability and chaos and disruption that Trump embraces,” Connolly said.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolJust two days ago, President-elect Trump and Elon Musk threatened to ensure a primary challenge for any House Republican who voted for a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase. Tonight, 170 of them did just that.
Speaker Mike Johnson, talking with reporters at the Capitol, said he spoke with Trump and Elon Musk about the legislation within the last hour.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the Capitol“He knew exactly what we were doing and why, and this is a good outcome for the country,” Johnson said, referring to Trump.
The bill passes 366 to 34. The only lawmakers voting to oppose this bill — all 34 of them — are Republicans. All Democrats voted for this legislation except Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who voted present. An earlier version of this update misstated which Democratic House member voted present. Jasmine Crockett of Texas voted present, not Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.
With more than 350 lawmakers now voting in favor of this stopgap bill, it is set to easily pass the House, absent a drove of members suddenly changing their votes.
In a full-circle moment, Elon Musk, who barraged the first spending deal with a torrent of criticism on X, just posted on the platform that Johnson “did a good job here, given the circumstances.”
“It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces,” Musk says.
When Speaker Mike Johnson walked away from a bipartisan deal to avert a government shutdown this week, Democrats cried foul, saying Republicans had put the demands of Elon Musk and President-elect Donald J. Trump over the interests of ordinary people.
Democrats singled out one particularly sympathetic cause to reinforce their argument: childhood cancer provisions that were dropped from the compromise as Republicans struggled to find a way to keep federal funding flowing.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolDemocrats emerging from the closed-door meeting say they intend to vote “yes” on the bill. Jeffries told them that “on balance, it’s a win for the American people,” said Bill Foster of Illinois.
“It was a compromise,” Foster added. “We definitely did not give Elon Musk and Donald Trump what they wanted, and we got most of what we wanted, what we’ve been negotiating.”
The House is voting now on the third stopgap bill House Republicans have put forward this week to avert a government shutdown. It needs the support of two-thirds of the lawmakers present and voting to pass. If it fails, we are all but certainly headed for a shutdown.
In a last-ditch pitch to lawmakers about six hours ahead of the shutdown deadline, Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, makes the case on the House floor for the legislation. “If you vote no on this bill,” Cole says, “you are effectively voting to shut down the government.”
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolMinority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that the removal of the debt ceiling provision is a step in the right direction for Democrats to potentially support the bill on the floor tonight.
“What needed to come out of the bill has come out of the bill,” Jeffries said, referring to suspension of the debt ceiling. “Now we’ve got to evaluate the four corners of what remains in the legislation.”
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, had recently been pushing for Congress to pass the Take It Down Act, an online safety measure. But this week, Mr. Musk jeopardized its passage as he railed against the passage of a bipartisan spending deal that included the act — actions that eventually led to its defeat in a House vote on Thursday night.
X registered to lobby in favor of the Take It Down Act and several other pieces of legislation related to child safety, according to a disclosure form filed in October. Take It Down — cosponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota — is designed to enable victims of deepfake pornography to have the images removed from tech platforms. Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, has publicly campaigned for several bills focused on online safety, including the Kids Online Safety Act, which the Senate passed earlier this year but the House declined to take up this week.
Right now Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee and a senior leader in the party, is railing against Republicans on the House floor for reneging on the deal that Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker, struck earlier with her party.
It seems to be an open question whether large numbers of Democrats will come to Republicans’ aid here to pass the legislation. Speaker Mike Johnson is again using a special procedure to fast-track this bill to the House floor, and it will require two-thirds of lawmakers present and voting to support the bill in order for it to pass.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolDemocrats are congregating beneath the Capitol for a closed-door meeting where they’lldiscuss whether or not to support the stopgap bill. Arriving members brush off reporter questions by saying they haven’t had a chance to read the text yet.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolRepresentative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat who voted “present” on last night’s failed bill, said she would make her decision on the new bill based primarily on whether it contains enough farm assistance and funding for health programs, such as those for pediatric cancer research. “It depends on how bad it is,” Kaptur said, when asked if the elimination of those provisions would push her to vote no.
Maya C. Miller
Reporting from the CapitolRepublicans leaving a closed-door meeting of their conference this afternoon said the bill that the House plans to vote on Friday evening includes temporary funding until March 14, as well as more than $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in emergency assistance for farmers. It also would extend the expiring farm bill for a year. It is effectively the same bill that failed on Thursday night, minus a provision to raise the debt ceiling.
A federal government shutdown probably wouldn’t be enough to derail the solid U.S. economy. But it could inject more uncertainty into an already murky economic outlook.
Funding for the federal government will lapse at the end of Friday if Congress doesn’t reach a deal to extend it. It is still possible that legislators will act in time to prevent a shutdown, or will restore funding quickly enough to avoid significant disruptions and minimize any economic impact.
The House will vote after 5 p.m. on the stopgap funding bill, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the Republican whip, just said in an alert to lawmakers.
Mitch McConnell marked the end of his 18 years as Republican leader on Friday with a floor speech reminding his colleagues that they have a choice in the Senate: “Do nothing, or try to find things you can agree on and do them together.” McConnell received a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle, and noted that he planned to remain in the Senate at least two more years. “I fully intend to keep frustrating my critics in the years ahead,” he said.
A government shutdown would have significant consequences for more than two million federal employees. Some would be forced to report to work and the rest would be furloughed. None would be paid during the shutdown.
More than two million federal workers would be affected by a shutdown
Agency
Total workers
Pct. on furlough
Department of Defense
804,244
55%
Department of Veterans Affairs
458,579
4%
Department of Homeland Security
264,209
11%
Department of Justice
114,521
16%
Department of the Treasury
97,620
64%
Department of Agriculture
96,931
59%
Department of Health and Human Services
90,512
45%
Department of Interior
65,397
51%
Department of Transportation
57,146
33%
Department of Commerce
52,507
84%
Department of State
31,573
67%
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
18,310
93%
Environmental Protection Agency
16,851
90%
Department of Labor
14,905
73%
Department of Energy
13,850
60%
General Services Administration
12,732
51%
Department of Housing and Urban Development
8,573
80%
Small Business Administration
8,171
20%
Securities and Exchange Commission
5,041
92%
Department of Education
4,176
90%
Smithsonian Institution
3,950
70%
Office of Personnel Management
2,869
20%
Federal Trade Commission
1,388
70%
Other lawmakers exiting the session said they expected one vote on a government funding package, disaster relief and payments to farmers, minus a debt ceiling increase that caused Republicans to oppose a similar bill on Thursday.
Speaker Mike Johnson exited a closed meeting with House Republicans and said he intended to move forward with legislation today, though he said some details remain to be worked out. “There is unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward,” he told reporters. “We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations.”
The Health and Human Services Department began a campaign on Friday to support childhood vaccinations that federal health officials said was intended to “cut through the noise of misinformation.”
The announcement, which came as House Republicans were racing to avert a government shutdown at midnight, did not mention Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, a longtime vaccine skeptic. But its timing, while Mr. Kennedy has been meeting with Republican lawmakers to make the case for his selection, was striking.
While Republicans met to discuss options for keeping the government open, President-elect Donald J. Trump continued to flesh out his incoming administration with loyalists. Writing on Truth Social, he said he had chosen Brian Burch to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Burch, a father of nine who lives outside Chicago, is a founder of CatholicVote, a conservative group that lobbies lawmakers and campaigned for Trump in seven swing states. Trump praised Burch for supporting his campaign.
In 2018, during Donald J. Trump’s first presidency, he said he would be “proud” to shut down the government if a deal was not reached that included funding he wanted for his proposed wall along the southern U.S. border.
“I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump said at the time. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”
The 38 House Republicans who refused to vote for the spending deal pushed by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s are largely limited-government fiscal hawks who believe they are impervious to a primary threat in their bids for re-election.
There was Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, known on Capitol Hill as Mr. No, who has never bent to Mr. Trump and so far never suffered politically for it. In 2020, when he tried to derail the passage of a coronavirus emergency relief bill, Mr. Trump called him a “third rate Grandstander” and said voters needed to “throw Massie out of Republican Party!”
Stock investors took their cue from data showing that inflation continued to slow in November, shrugging off the looming threat of a government shutdown.
The S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent on Friday, its biggest gain in over a month. The rally came after the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, showed a slower than expected gain in prices — on a monthly basis — than economists had expected."
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