The House has only two days left in session before the first of Congress’s two government shutdown deadlines, and lawmakers are on a very short timeline to reach a bipartisan agreement.
House members ended the week Thursday afternoon after leaders canceled a vote scheduled for Friday.
Unless lawmakers attend caucus meetings or committee work, they are largely not expected to return to the Capitol until Feb. 28, two days before the March 1 deadline for funding some government agencies. do not have.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson has until March 1 to find a way to avoid a government shutdown. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The remaining institutions have until March 8 to receive funding.
“We believe we can meet the deadline,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday when asked about the spending process.
He previously passed two short-term extensions of previous year’s government funding agreements, known as continuing resolutions. Congress passed a total of three bills to continue government operations past the original fiscal year deadline of September 30th.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson will have to negotiate a bipartisan spending deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
But the fight over spending has been a divisive battle, especially for Mr. Johnson’s thin House Republican majority, and it probably won’t get any easier.
Last month, he and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., agreed to set the maximum amount of discretionary spending next year at $1.59 trillion, but with an earlier attachment of an additional $69 billion. They also announced that they would respect the agreement.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he had secured an additional $16 billion in cuts this year to offset some of that.
But hardline Republicans, including the House Freedom Caucus, have said they would not support anything above the maximum total amount of $1.59 trillion.
The House Freedom Caucus is trying to put a rift in bipartisan spending talks. (Getty Images)
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They repeatedly brought proceedings in the House to a grinding halt by intentionally overturning their own party’s measures in protest of bipartisan agreements.
This split, and Mr Johnson’s three-seat majority, almost certainly means that Mr Johnson will need to seek Democratic support in the House of Representatives before considering the Liberal-controlled Senate.
Meanwhile, President Biden on Friday entered a two-week recess without bringing it to a vote after the Senate recently passed a $95 billion national security supplement to help Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific region. criticized members of the House of Representatives.
