WASHINGTON — House Republicans narrowly passed a stopgap bill Tuesday to fund the government until October, putting moderate Senate Democrats in the tough spot of having to either give the measure final approval — or tank it and risk a partial government shutdown in three days.
Lawmakers voted 217-213 for the short-term fiscal year 2025 spending bill, known as a “continuing resolution” or CR, to avert a partial government shutdown at 11:59 p.m. ET Friday.
Libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and 212 Democrats opposed the measure. Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) joined 216 Republicans in supporting the bill.
Reps. Tim Moore (R-NC) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) were absent.
With 53 Republicans in the upper chamber, at least seven Democrats will have to cross the aisle to break the filibuster and send the bill to President Trump’s desk for a signatures. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has complicated that math saying he will vote against the CR.
Massie became the first House GOPer to come out against the resolution on Sunday, while lawmakers ranging from the hard-right Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) to the centrist Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) remained undecided as the vote approached.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP appropriators crafted the short-term solution spending patch, with Trump’s endorsement, to keep the government’s lights on through Sept. 30.
Since the GOP first retook control of the House of Representatives in January 2023, Republicans have not been able to pass a CR without Democratic support.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Johnson said in a Tuesday press conference. “If Congressional Democrats refuse to support this clean CR, they will be responsible for every troop who misses a paycheck, for every flight delay from reduced staffing at TSA, and for every negative consequence that comes from shutting down the government.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and other Democrats have claimed that the funding resolution won’t “protect” federal benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and will strip benefits from veterans and “nutritional assistance for children and families.”
In the past, hardline Republicans have voted against CRs and forced party leaders to rely on Democrats to get the bills over the line. With 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats currently in the House, the GOP can only afford to lose one vote when there’s full attendance.
Normally a critic of CRs, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), who leads the most conservative caucus of Republicans in the House, issued a statement of full support in Tuesday’s presser.
“This is the first continuing resolution in my 14 years that actually reduces the amount of spending from the previous year, while funding the military, funding veterans, funding the women and infant children’s programs,” said Harris.
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) noted that the stopgap, in fact, “increases spending” for veterans and nutritional assistance programs — including $500 million for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
“They either have an issue with reading comprehension,” Johnson declared of his Democratic colleagues, “or they are attempting to run one of the most shameful misinformation campaigns that we have seen in our lives.”
The bill’s provisions will also boost defense spending by $6 billion while cutting back $13 billion in non-defense spending from the $1.66 trillion spent in total during fiscal year 2024.
As part of that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will receive almost $10 billion, more than the previous year’s spending, to carry out Trump’s mass deportation operation.
House GOP senior aides told reporters in a phone call Saturday that cuts for non-defense spending targeted earmarks and “side deals” brokered by ex-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), former President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) two years ago during a debt ceiling fight.
Vice President JD Vance blamed Johnson’s predecessor for having cut “a bad deal” amid that fracas, which resulted in passage of the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act to raise the nation’s debt limit, during a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday morning, a source familiar with the discussion told The Post.
Vance also urged GOP lawmakers in the lower chamber to “jam” the Senate with the funding bill, forcing Democrats into taking a tough vote, the source added — while emphasizing that keeping funding levels flat from the previous year will be a de facto cut to spending.
Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) characterized Vance’s message to The Post as “get the first down, keep the ball, keep moving the ball up the field,” following the private session.
If moderate Senate Democrats don’t back the CR, Meuser added, then they’ll “shut down the government.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), one of those centrists, has called the CR “awful” but didn’t necessarily make a hard commitment to voting against it.
“We’re trying desperately to keep the government open but not to go with a plan that will give Elon Musk and his boys the ability to wantonly chop up government,” Warner said in a video posted to X.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) appears to be the most amenable Senate Democrat to potentially backing the CR.
“I’m never going to vote or withhold my vote as part of shutting the government down,” Fetterman told CNN. “I don’t know why any of my colleagues might try to threaten they are going to be shutting down the government.
“That’s chaos. I’ll never vote for chaos.”
The dilemma facing Democrats is that many see the government shutdown fight as their last major opportunity to extract concessions from Republicans until the appropriations process in September.
“We’re going to wait to see what the House does first,” Schumer told reporters on Tuesday.
They are particularly interested in reining in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is why so many hardline Republicans have backed the CR — so that Dems don’t get that leverage.
To peel off recalcitrant members, GOP leadership had pitched the stopgap as a means of buying more time so that Republicans could work to codify some of DOGE’s cuts later on.
“It takes a little time to get them organized [and] identified. And we’re not going to have that all ready [in time],” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) previously told The Post about the need for more time to codify the cuts.
Congress is tasked with funding the federal government every new fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1, or else face a shutdown — and those DOGE cuts could be included in the next year’s fiscal resolution.
