House Passes Stopgap Funding Bill, Averting Shutdown

House Passes Stopgap Funding Bill, Averting Shutdown

Engraving of the U.S. Capitol dome

The News

370-48, and it took Democrats to do it

The House passed a short-term spending bill Tuesday that funds the federal government through Dec. 11, clearing the last obstacle to a shutdown that would have started Oct. 1 and landed in the middle of the midterm campaign. The vote was 370-48, the Associated Press reported. The Senate has already approved the measure, so it now goes to President Donald Trump's desk for his signature.

Speaker Mike Johnson did not get there on Republican votes alone. The Washington Examiner counted 176 Democrats backing the bill and 19 Republicans opposing it. Leadership brought the measure up under suspension of the rules, a procedure requiring a two-thirds majority — and one that lets leaders move legislation they cannot pass on a party-line procedural vote.

Trump had not signed the bill as of Tuesday evening, and no source in the coverage reviewed for this article reports a signing.

Reactions

"It gives the nation and our constituents certainty, certainty that the government will remain open, certainty that our service members will be paid," said Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, per the AP.

"We're going to avoid the threat of another Democratic shutdown," Johnson told reporters before the vote.

"Whether a community receives disaster relief should not depend on who they voted for in the last election," she said.

Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, opposed a provision delaying a federal ban on hemp-derived products by a month, telling the Examiner the House should vote separately on what he called the "Senate's ridiculous provisions extending poisoning our children for a month with intoxicating hemp products and allowing George Soros-linked NGOs to get grants."

Rep. Chip Roy objected on several grounds but emphasized that the bill does not bar Medicaid reimbursements for abortion providers, which he said would allow Planned Parenthood to receive federal funds.

Rep. Eric Burlison said he opposed the grants provision because it would "cancel the ability for the administration to cancel these grants."

Rep. Keith Self objected to the process itself — continuing resolutions, he said, should not move under suspension. "They've gone to get Democrat votes," Self told reporters. "They're not asking for my vote."

What's Next

That anger has a second act. Roy and Harris said they would withhold their votes from a procedural rule later Tuesday over leadership's use of suspension, the Examiner reported. The rule has no bearing on the funding bill, which has already passed. But if it fails, leadership cannot bring up a resolution condemning "socialism in all its forms," and may have to cancel some of the chamber's 14 remaining legislative days before the November elections.

What this does not settle

Nearly everything. The bill funds agencies generally at current levels and buys about three months. Republicans want hundreds of billions of dollars more for the military while cutting most non-defense programs; Democrats call that a non-starter and want domestic programs treated at parity. Neither side has moved. The same fight returns on Dec. 11, after the election rather than before it.

More

Why Democrats voted for a Republican-run House's bill

Because it is not the bill the House passed in the summer. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the lead Democrat on Appropriations, urged her colleagues in a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning to support it, the AP reported, and said the Senate had improved it in two specific ways: it blocks the Department of Homeland Security from transferring funds to the Border Patrol, and it delays a proposed rule that would give political appointees more authority to stop federal grants from going out to programs they consider off-agenda.

Democrats fear that rule would be used to steer money away from Democratic-led states. DeLauro called the delay a first step and said more has to be done to stop the policy outright.

The Republicans who voted no

The objections, per the Washington Examiner, ran in several directions at once.

The backdrop: two shutdowns already

Lawmakers in both parties were unwilling to test voters a third time. A record 43-day shutdown hit last fall in a fight over renewing an expiring tax credit that lowers the cost of health coverage bought through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, per the AP. That was followed by a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security that ran 76 days, ending when lawmakers agreed to fund much of the department but not its immigration enforcement operations.

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