Congressional leaders agreed to postpone the fight over funding until spring 2025 and keep the government going past the looming Sept. 30 deadline after an earlier attempt to attach a citizenship-certified voting bill backed by President Trump failed.
The House is expected to take up the bill, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), as soon as next week.
Here are some of the items that were selected and some that weren't.
Funding through December
The agreement, announced Sunday afternoon, will allow the government to continue receiving funding until December 20, buying time to finalize funding agreements for the remainder of the 2025 fiscal year.
A period of roughly three months is the preferred time frame of hard-line Democrats and Republican defense hawks.
The announcement came after the full House rejected a bill that would have included a six-month stopgap measure sought by conservatives. Republicans who supported a longer stopgap measure had hoped it would reduce the likelihood of a big omnibus spending package at the end of the year and give former President Donald Trump more say over the 2025 budget if he returns to power this fall.
But in a conference call with reporters before the bill was released, House Republican aides said the concessions did not mean Republicans agreed with the pre-Christmas package, and that lawmakers would “likely have similar conversations” again at the end of the year.
Secret Service Funding
The bill includes an additional $231 million for the Secret Service in the wake of the second assassination attempt on President Trump.
The Secret Service budget proposal comes as interim Director Ronald Rowe has pushed for increased funding for the agency.
Rowe said earlier this week that the department “needs to retain the staffing we have, and in order to do that, we need to have the funding to be able to hire more people.”
But some Republicans in Congress have questioned how more funding would help protect Trump with just weeks to go until Election Day, and some have pointed to funding the agency has already received in recent years.
“They've not been very effective right now. We gave them more money this year than they asked for and I find it hard to believe they didn't have enough money. They couldn't redeploy troops or anything,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the House's top funding committee, told reporters Thursday, adding that the issue was “more policy and wise use of the resources they have.”
Aides to House Republican leaders said the funding would be “limited to immediate support necessary for the campaign” as President Trump and Vice President Harris enter the final stretch before Election Day. They also said the money would come with “several conditions,” including meeting congressional requirements, as committees provide oversight of the agency, including a House task force formed to investigate the July assassination attempt on President Trump.
SAVE Method
The bill released Sunday does not include the Protect American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, despite President Trump urging the party to fight to get the bill passed this month even if it means shutting down the government.
Supporters say the bill would ensure that only citizens can vote in federal elections, require states to obtain proof of citizenship for voter registration and seeks to purge non-citizens from voter rolls.
Conservative House lawmakers, along with President Trump, had pushed for the legislation to be attached to the measure that passed the House as a standalone bill with unanimous Republican support earlier this year, but Republicans widely viewed it as an opening proposal to gain leverage in eventual negotiations with the Senate.
They acknowledged that the bill would never win approval from the Democratic-led Senate or President Biden. Critics of the effort point out that it is already a crime and extremely rare for foreign nationals to vote in federal elections. The White House also argued that the bill would make it more difficult for people to register to vote.
President Trump has called for a government shutdown without a bill, but most House Republicans have said they don't want to let the budget lapse so close to an election.
Submarine financing
Funding for the Virginia-class submarines, which was included in the previous Republican-backed plan, is not included in the new tentative plan.
Previous plans had sought to allocate about $2 billion to the Defense Department for “shipbuilding and upgrades” for the program, but officials said Sunday that funding had been scrapped after “joint consultations” with budget officials, defense officials and the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Senate Democratic appropriators: Section Breakdown The bill also expands the department's authority to mandate funding for “military construction projects that were first funded in fiscal years 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020” during the interim period.
VA shortage
The bill also fails to address the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which has warned it could face a $12 billion funding shortfall in fiscal year 2025, despite pressure from Democrats.
But the 46-page bill is packed with numerous expansions to the VA health care system, including measures to expand the VA's authority to provide nursing care to veterans with “service-connected disabilities,” as well as expand the authority of the Defense and VA Joint Health Facility Demonstration Fund, budget writers said.
Budget writers also said the bill reallocates canceled funds that were set aside for major construction in fiscal year 2024 but “were not obligated to be available in fiscal year 2025.”
They also note that the bill includes an expansion of authority for “monthly assistance allowances to disabled veterans who undergo training in Paralympic and Olympic sports programs.”
“VA currently allocates $2 million to implement Paralympic and Olympic sports programs, an amount that has not been increased in over a decade,” the Democratic appropriators noted, highlighting that the bill “increases funding to $2.5 million each fiscal year from 2024 through 2027.”
The move comes after Congress passed legislation last week to address the VA's more immediate $3 billion shortfall, with officials warning that veterans' benefits could be cut off starting next month if Congress doesn't act.
But lawmakers say there is still time to address the threat of a larger potential shortfall, and Republicans in Congress have said they need more information from the department about the shortfall before Congress can act, amid increased scrutiny of the VA's budget management.
FEMA Funding
The three-month stopgap measure does not include the additional $10 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Disaster Relief Fund that was included in the House Republicans' original six-month plan, but it will give the agency about three months to put the fund's money to work more quickly to respond to disasters.
“We made a joint decision to address the disaster aspects that will not have additional disaster funding because it will be a two-and-a-half-month CR,” the aides said Sunday, but noted the bill still includes disaster funding in the form of “replenishment of the Disaster Relief Fund within FEMA once the CR becomes law.”
Aides said the amount was “more than sufficient for a two-and-a-half month period” and that “further discussions” would continue on the matter in the coming months.
Emily Brooks and Michael Schnell contributed.
