The decision does prevent ending cash flow for most of the government as of tomorrow. But unlike past times when a divided Congress used the threat of a shutdown to force some tough dialog, this time the act of “kicking the can” of final decision-making for a future day could end up making the negotiations even tougher.
Last year the Congress evaded having to negotiate consensus on Republican demands over proposed major spending cuts and tightened border control regulations versus White House and Democrat requests for substantial new funds to keep the war going in Ukraine and ship more weapons and munitions for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. It did so not by resolving much but instead allowing for a simplified continuing resolution which would keep the federal government funded for a few more months.
The first of those continuing resolutions (CRs) cost House Speaker Kevin McCarthy his job. That happened because extreme right House caucus members believed McCarthy had compromised his commitments to them in agreeing to chop anything out of that short-term settlement other than to keep Washington up and running for a few months longer.
The next CR came in November courtesy of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who was voted in by Congressional Representatives as of October 25. That proposal pushed the next deadline for an ongoing budget to January and split it so that there was more time to resolve issues regarding military and State Department issues than for everything else.
As January began, with illegal immigration passage across the border with Mexico becoming a far more serious political issue, and contention regarding what to do about Ukraine war funding growing more intense, it was clear nothing more than another CR could be passed at this time. That new continuing resolution is the one that would have expired as of just two days from now for about one-fifth of the government, with the rest having a few weeks more for debate.
The agreement reached yesterday in principle by both sides of Congress now gives Congress until March 8 to pass a bill regarding what happens to programs and general funding for the departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. Those agencies add up to about 20% of all federal spending. Money for the rest of the government, which includes Commerce, the Defense Department, and the State Department, must be settled out by March 22.
That is all based on a late negotiating session which took place yesterday between Joe Biden, House Speaker Johnson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in the Oval Office. That led to further negotiations back at the Capitol Building yesterday.
“Negotiators in both chambers continue working to ensure the government will not shut down at the end of the week,” Schumer said as the discussions in both chambers to turn the short-term plan into formal legislation began yesterday morning. “We continue to make very good progress on an agreement, and we are very close to getting it done.”
The House is expected to vote on the new continuing resolution to enable this later today. The Senate could vote as early as tonight, depending on when the House passage comes through, assuming there are no fundamental problems in securing the votes, something which is even now not rock solid. The White House is lined up to have Joe Biden sign off on the plan shortly afterwards.
After that, the hard part of avoiding missing another set of continuing resolution deadlines starts again.
If anything, this time the arguments over passing a revised omnibus spending bill to prevent another CR cycle are more divisive than ever. With that comes the prospect that even with pushing out the final deadline, the likelihood that further delays will ensue, and political agendas driven from outside Congress – including from the presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump – will intrude and create more havoc.
On the Republican side, the House wants far tougher immigration regulations put in place to prevent the crossings by over 250,000 illegal migrants just in December 2023 alone. Some members even wanted to insert a rider on a recently proposed funding bill that would penalize Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka for not doing what they feel was an adequate job managing this, by cutting his salary to zero.
Representative Bob Good of Virginia, the Republican head of the right-wing Freedom Caucus, called for any long-term bill the House would pass to including automatic spending cuts even for previously approved programs, and a significantly enhanced foreign intelligence surveillance authorization measure. Both are highly partisan and controversial, even within the Republicans in the chamber.
The Republican majority in that chamber also asked for another rider which would amend the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The proposed change would amend SNAP, the successor to the former “food stamp”, on a pilot basis to prevent those using the program from applying its benefits for anything other than “nutrient dense” items.
The SNAP amendments came after House Democrats lobbied for an additional $1 billion for the government’s Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC. The popular program provides federal grant money for states to use to provide health care referrals, supplemental foods, and nutrition educational outreach for low-income women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding. The program also provides food supplement support for babies and children up to age 5 who are at risk for malnutrition. The $1 billion is needed, the supporters say, because 2023 demand for the program increased faster than had been anticipated.
Along with these issues are also the questions of what to do about the over $60 billion of funding increases by the U.S. for Ukraine and a $14 billion one for Israel, mostly so it can continue its war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Of those two the Ukraine funds are perhaps most at risk, since after two years of war with Russia with no clear victory in site and no peace plan in place, many Congressional representatives are questioning if this is the right use of American money. The Israel funds should also be in question, but with Israeli lobbying groups such as AIPAC continuing to be so successful and with a substantial percentage of House and Senate members strongly in support of the genocide, that funding will probably continue to go through.
Above all this is the question of how Donald Trump, who continues to have substantial influence on Republicans in the House in particular, will use that power to manipulate events there as he steps into position from being the party’s front-runner to already having most primary votes in his pocket. Trump, who most recently made headlines by recommending Vladimir Putin of Russia attack countries in NATO who are not paying their requisite share of that organization’s funding, has also recently pushed for shutting down the government instead of allowing major changes in immigration policy to be attached to any major spending bill in the House.
Trump also continues to maintain his power over the House even as he has already lost multiple court cases filed against him and as many other state and federal charges pending against him, in multiple venues.
Balancing out against this is that, as certain members such as George Santos and Kevin McCarthy have left the House, only to be replaced by Democrats, House Speaker Johnson is growing conscious that pursuing too radical an agenda to attach to a long-term funding resolution could be difficult because his party now only controls a two-seat majority there.
More will be learned about all of this over the next few days as the latest continuing resolution is voted upon, and the terms and conditions for passing it solidify.