The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a short-term funding bill, forestalling the chance of a federal government shutdown this weekend.
The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a short-term funding bill, forestalling the chance of a federal government shutdown this weekend. On one level, this is a win for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., as the first piece of major legislation to pass during his short tenure. On another, much more significant level, this is a win for House Democrats, whose united support saved the bill from a possible defeat without giving up anything real.
Even though the weird “laddered” resolution with multiple deadlines was its idea, the far-right House Freedom Caucus came out against the continuing resolution, or CR, on Tuesday morning. “Republicans must stop negotiating against ourselves over fears of what the Senate may do with the promise ‘roll over today and we’ll fight tomorrow,’” the group said in its statement. At the same time, even though it’s a Republican bill, House Democratic leadership issued a statement Tuesday afternoon throwing its support behind it.
And it’s a good thing it did. The parliamentary maneuvering from Republicans to avoid another potentially messy loss on the floor meant that the bill needed two-thirds of the House’s support to pass. It cleared that threshold handily, 336-95, with Democrats providing the lion’s share of those votes. All told, 93 Republicans voted against the bill, or nearly half of the caucus as a whole.
We’re here because the federal government technically ran out of money on Sept. 30, as none of the annual appropriations bills had passed into law. Instead, Congress, at the last minute, passed an extension of the previous fiscal year’s funding that would keep the status quo in place until Friday.
