Senate Advances Yet Another Interim Funding Bill to Avert Shutdown

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks to the press after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other lawmakers in Congress in Washington on Dec. 12, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

With the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 already in the rearview, Congress appears poised to kick the spending can even further down the road.

In a 68–3 procedural vote on Jan. 16, the Senate advanced Congress’ third stopgap spending bill in four months to avert a partial government shutdown.

Leaders of both congressional chambers and the White House reached an agreement on the interim measure—called a continuing resolution (CR)—and unveiled its text over the weekend.

The bill would extend the deadlines for Congress to pass two sets of annual appropriations bills to March 1 and March 8. Due to the two-part “laddered” nature of the CR passed in November, current funding is set to expire on Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.

“The focus of this week will be to pass this extension as quickly as we can,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the chamber prior to the vote.

“Time is of the essence,” Mr. Schumer stressed, noting the first deadline was just days away. However, he added that he believed a “clean” CR could be passed before then “if both sides continue to work in good faith.”

“The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation in both chambers. You can’t pass these bills without support from Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate,” he said.

The senator said the measure should be passed not only to prevent a shutdown but also to provide lawmakers with more time to flesh out the top-line spending deal he and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) reached earlier this month.

Mr. Johnson made a similar appeal in a Jan. 14 statement, holding that the CR “is required to complete what House Republicans are working hard to achieve: an end to governance by omnibus, meaningful policy wins, and better stewardship of American tax dollars.”

Intraparty Tensions

The two leaders agreed to a $1.59 trillion spending cap for the fiscal year—a number former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden agreed to last year during debt limit negotiations.

The latest agreement amends that prior deal to include an additional $10 billion in IRS personnel cuts. It also includes $886 billion in defense spending and $6.1 billion in COVID-19 spending cuts.

But hardliners in the House Republican conference have condemned the deal, noting that the true top-line figure is closer to $1.66 trillion when discretionary spending is included.

“The [House GOP] is planning to pass a short-term spending bill continuing Pelosi levels with Biden policies, to buy time to pass longer-term spending bills at Pelosi levels with Biden policies. This is what surrender looks like,” the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus wrote in an X post.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has been an outspoken opponent of both the tentative spending deal and the idea of passing another stopgap spending bill. Taking to social media before the Senate vote, he vented his frustrations.

“It has been 2 decades since Congress passed all its appropriation bills to fund the government instead of passing a CR,” he wrote. “Republicans should be united in reducing spending and refusing to repeat the failures of the past. The House majority has to matter!”

It was amid similar tensions that Mr. McCarthy, who has since resigned from Congress, was ousted from the speakership in September. Republicans have said that’s unlikely to happen again, though with the same rules in place, it would take just one member to force a vote on the matter.

Mr. Johnson, for his part, has waved off speculation about that possibility, telling reporters, “I’m not concerned about that.”

Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman contributed to this report.