House Republicans passed a partisan continuing resolution on Friday that would kick the government funding deadline to November and prevent a looming government shutdown — if passed by the Senate.
The continuing resolution, or CR, will need at least seven Senate Democrats to vote with Republicans in order for the bill to pass — and the finger pointing on who is to blame for a potential shutdown has already begun.
“If Chuck Schumer intends to shut the government down, I don’t see an easy route out of that,” Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday. “There’s going to be a lot of pain, and a lot of people will suffer from that unnecessarily.”
Rep. Tom Cole, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said a government shutdown would be “silly beyond belief.”
“It will not work in the end. It pushes people into corners,” Cole told reporters. “It’s a lot easier to shut down the government than it is to reopen it. It’s usually a humiliating experience for somebody.”
Two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie and Victoria Spartz, voted ‘no’ on the bill, and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, voted for the bill.
The short-term “clean” CR passed in a 217-212 vote. Republicans say it extends government funding at current levels, and it would prevent a looming government shutdown if it’s signed into law by Sept. 30. The seven-week funding extension — which President Donald Trump had been pushing for — is supposed to give lawmakers more time to get appropriations bills through Congress.
“It’s just interesting that all of a sudden, year after year of saying how irresponsible it is to shut down the government, now [Democrats] are doing it,” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart, a cardinal on the House Appropriations Committee, told NOTUS.
“Assuming that Schumer doesn’t want to shut down the government, it puts us in a position to finish appropriation bills,” Diaz-Balart added.
House leadership released the bill text on Tuesday, which included tens of millions of dollars for member security amid escalating political violence, as well as a “D.C. funding fix” that allows the District of Columbia to spend over $1 billion of its own funds raised by local taxes. But it didn’t include health care demands, like an extension of Affordable Care Act health insurance premium subsidies, that Democrats said were required to garner their support. Democrats argued Republicans did not negotiate with them on this CR and released their own CR text in retaliation.
“The Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House. We have been saying we’re ready to work with you on this, but this shutdown is on them,” Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey told reporters after the vote.
Democratic leadership in the House and Senate argued for the last week that they would stay unified in opposing this CR unless these demands were met. In March, 10 Senate Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted with Republicans on a CR after it passed the House, keeping the government open.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters she wasn’t expecting a repeat of what happened in March.
“I’ll leave it to my Senate colleagues to talk about that, but I don’t believe that there will be any Democratic votes,” DeLauro said Thursday.
“The Senate is with us,” DeLauro told reporters later in the day. “We’re in lockstep.”
Rep. Tom Cole, chair of the committee, expressed some caution about how the CR vote in the Senate may go.
“I don’t know what we’re going to get on the other side. I think we might pick up a couple,” Cole said Thursday. “I’m optimistic, but I don’t think this is a slam dunk.”
As for what happens next between the Senate and the House, Cole said: “We’re done until they act on it, or send us something back that’s different, which they certainly could do.”
“I actually consider that healthy if we’re in a ping-pong,” Cole added. “To send us back something, both parties would have had to agree on it over there. So you’ve got some bipartisanship going and you’ve got a negotiation. And honestly, it moves away from a partisan fight to an institutional fight, House versus Senate.”
A Senate vote on the CR is expected Friday afternoon. Most Senate Democrats, besides Sen. John Fetterman, are expected to vote ‘no’ on cloture, meaning the CR will fail.