The House is now out until the week after Labor Day, meaning that lawmakers will have a key item on their agenda when they return: funding the government. Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to avoid a government shutdown that would otherwise start when the calendar turns to October and a new fiscal year begins.
The House has passed five of the 12 annual appropriations bills, largely along party lines. House Speaker had pledged to pass all 12 bills before lawmakers left for their August recess, but the Republican leader’s ambitious plans and aggressive timetable were derailed by divisions within his own conference — the same divisions that plagued Republicans during last year’s drawn-out appropriations process and were always likely to arise again.
“Johnson has been bringing bills to the floor, only to pull them from consideration before they failed as far-right Republicans take hard-line stances on their own priorities,” The Washington Post reported. GOP leaders were forced to pull their Energy and Water bill Tuesday night.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise blamed Democrats for the lack of progress. “When you have a situation where the Democrats all vote no on every appropriations bill, you eventually hit a wall because, you know, we have a few of our own members that vote against some of these bills,” he told The Hill this week.
Of course, House Republicans’ partisan spending measures would have gone nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, which has yet to pass any of its own spending bills, though the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday advanced four funding bills with bipartisan support. That brings the total number approved by the Senate panel to seven, and the five remaining bills are scheduled for consideration on August 1.
“Getting here has not been easy,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray said in her opening remarks at Thursday’s markup hearing. “It has required all of us to make some tough decisions and seeking out common ground. But as I made clear at our last markup, here in the Senate, we are moving ahead with strong bipartisan bills that can actually be passed and signed into law, and which actually address the issues we all hear about back home, and the many challenges we are seeing abroad.”
Lawmakers are scheduled to be in session for just three weeks — 13 legislative days — in September before departing again until after the November elections.
“Republicans hoping to govern responsibly ahead of the election want to extend funding until the end of the year,” the Post reports, adding that the lawmakers would then look to pass a larger funding package to avoid dropping a crisis on Donald Trump’s doorstep, if he’s re-elected. “But far-right members want any extension of current fiscal levels to go through early next year and include the SAVE Act, which would require voters to present proof of citizenship to vote.”
That would essentially dare Senate Democrats to oppose such a bill, potentially putting Congress on track for a shutdown. But conservatives may not be able to get their wish, and the speaker is still deciding on how he wants to approach the CR.
