House passes funding bill with hours to go before government shutdown

The House has approved a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday, hours before the federal funding deadline at midnight.

The bill, which needed approval by two-thirds of the chamber, overwhelmingly passed on a 366-34 vote.

All Democrats voted in favor of the bill except Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who voted “present.”

Lawmakers were scrambling for a way forward after President-elect Trump and his allies rejected an initial bill on Wednesday, and a subsequent Trump-approved bill failed in the House on Thursday.

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But Trump has remained remarkably silent on the latest move, which many House Republicans saw as a tacit sign of approval.

Speaker Mike JohnsonR-La., was upbeat after days of uncertainty, telling reporters there would be a full House vote Friday as he left a closed-door GOP meeting where leaders laid out their plan .

“We will not have a government shutdown and we will meet our obligations to our farmers who need help, to disaster victims across the country, and to make sure that the military and essential services and everyone who depends on the federal government to get a paycheck is paid during the holidays,” Johnson said.

Meanwhile, the national debt is over $36 trillion and the deficit is over $1.8 trillion.

The legislation, if passed in the Senate, would extend current levels of government funding through mid-March, a measure known as a continuing resolution (CR), combined with just over $100 billion in relief aid in disaster relief for victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as aid for the agricultural industry.

Johnson bypassed normal House procedures to get the legislation straight to a floor vote, a maneuver known as a “suspension of the rules.”

In exchange for the fast track, however, the threshold for approval was raised from a simple majority to two-thirds of the House floor, meaning Democratic support is critical.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told reporters he believed Johnson reached an agreement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y. Massie, a longtime Johnson critic, said he would not vote for the bill.

“Trump wanted an increase in the debt limit, and now we’re bringing out the exact same bill without the increase in the debt limit,” Massie said.

Another Republican lawmaker argued that Johnson would not move forward without Trump’s blessing.

“We wouldn’t do it if they weren’t,” Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Rep., said when asked if Trump and Elon Musk supported the deal.

Trump and Musk led the conservative rebellion against the initial plan to avoid a partial shutdown, a bipartisan deal that emerged from negotiations between top leaders. two democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress.

The 1,547-page bill would have extended current government funding levels through March 14. However, GOP hardliners were angered by what they saw as measures unrelated to the bill, such as a pay raise for congressional lawmakers, provisions on health care policies and targeted legislation. in the revitalization of RFK Stadium in Washington, DC

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It was scrapped when Trump and Musk threatened to force out of office any lawmakers who did not support pairing a CR with action on the debt limit.

The debt limit is suspended until January 2025 through a prior bipartisan agreement, but Trump had pushed for Republicans to act now to avoid a messy and protracted fight early in his term.

The second iteration of the financing agreement was much slimmer, clocking in at 116 pages. It excluded the stadium bill and the congressional pay raise, but still included measures to fund the reconstruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and funding for disaster relief. It also suspended the debt limit until January 2027.

A House vote on the second plan went up in flames, however, after 38 Republicans opposed to raising or suspending the debt limit voted with all but two Democrats to defeat the bill.

Johnson met with those holdouts Friday morning, along with Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, and Vice President-elect JD Vance.

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The bill that passed the House on Friday does not act on the debt limit, but Johnson pledged in that closed-door meeting to raise the debt limit early next year as part of Republican plans to to massive policy and spending review.

During their closed-door meeting Friday, House GOP leaders unveiled their CR plan and a plan to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, followed by $2.5 trillion in cuts of net spending, multiple people told Fox News Digital.

Democrats who walked out of their own closed-door meeting shortly before the vote largely said they would support the bill, which they did.

President Biden has said he would sign it into law if it reaches his desk after a Senate vote.