House Republicans narrowly passed their plan to fund the government through September and avoid a government shutdown starting Friday night, delivering a significant win for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The showdown over the GOP bill was essentially a contest to see whether each party could stay unified. Both essentially did, as the vote, 207-213, fell almost entirely along party lines. One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, opposed the measure, and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, backed it.
“Today, House Republicans stood for the American people and voted to maintain funding the paychecks for our troops, the agents who secure our borders, the TSA workers responsible for safe air travel, as well as the healthcare and benefits for veterans, and essential services and programs that keep the government operational,” Johnson said in a statement after the vote.
House Democrats panned the plan because they said it gave President Trump and Elon Musk too much power over spending decisions and claimed that it would pave the way for GOP assaults on programs including Social Security and Medicaid. “This bill will unleash fury on the American people,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said before the vote. “It will facilitate the ongoing effort that is currently underway.”
Republicans insisted that their bill was a “clean” extension of current spending levels with no “poison pill” riders, though it does include some tweaks, and they rightfully pointed out that the measure itself does not cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.
Decision time for Senate Dems: The GOP bill now heads to the Senate, where Democrats are in something of a bind. They can oppose the bill like their House colleagues did and likely cause a government shutdown or they can help it pass even as some of their own members have warned it would undercut Congress’s power of the purse. Senate Democrats must also worry that a shutdown might backfire on them, both in terms of public opinion and by giving an unintended boost to the cost-cutting efforts driven by Musk and the Trump administration.
Top Democratic appropriators had released their own plan late Monday for a spending bill that would keep federal agencies open for a month and buy time for further negotiations on full-year spending bills. They now have no real hope for that fallback plan.
Upending traditional positions: This spending bill flipped the usual politics around continuing resolutions and shutdown threats.
Johnson posted a video on social media highlighting past Democratic arguments against shutting down the government. “It’s a striking new posture for Democrats who have always been apoplectic about the prospect of government shutdowns,” he told reporters.
On the Republican side, the House Freedom Caucus came out Monday night in support of the spending bill — notable because the hardline group more typically opposes these continuing resolutions. “If Democrats had proposed this same funding plan back in December, Republicans - especially the Freedom Caucus - would have denounced it,” congressional reporter Jamie Dupree noted. “It has no significant cuts and leaves in place policy deals negotiated with President Biden in 2024.”
The bill also does nothing to codify the DOGE cuts. The programs that the Trump administration is cutting, like those at the U.S. Agency for International Development, will continue to be funded by Congress, even as the administration looks to stop spending the appropriated funds.
The Freedom Caucus said in its statement that this continuing resolution is different from previous ones, echoing arguments made by Trump and congressional leaders: “This bill will reduce and then freeze spending for the next six months to allow President Trump and his Administration to continue their critical work within the Executive Branch to find and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. It entirely kills the prospect of a budget busting, pork filled omnibus this fiscal year, and it breaks the longstanding practice in the Swamp of handcuffing increases in defense funding with increases to the non-defense bureaucracy.”
The group also highlighted the additional money the bill would provide for immigration enforcement and deportation operations as well as the elimination of earmarks from the package and the continued rescission of Internal Revenue Service funding that Democrats had enacted.
“This is not your grandfather’s continuing resolution,” House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland told reporters Tuesday morning.
The bottom line: Republicans will now need at least eight Democrats to approve the bill in the Senate.