Congress funds the government but faces another shutdown threat before Christmas

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers averted a government shutdown 40 days before the election, but they’ll face another funding crunch right before the holidays and a new Congress and president take office.

Bipartisan negotiators have been trying to make progress on the 12 bills needed to fund federal agencies for the 2025 fiscal year.

Yet there's little time to pass those bills during the lame-duck session; House members and senators are scheduled to be in Washington for only five weeks between Election Day and the end of the year, and the two chambers haven’t reached agreement on any of the dozen measures, known as appropriations bills.

A more likely scenario is that Democrats and Republicans would strike an end-of-year deal on a massive, catchall omnibus spending package or punt the issue once again with another continuing resolution, or CR, that would extend funding into the new year on a short-term basis.

They’ll need a new funding agreement before federal funding runs out on Dec. 20.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., insisted this week that the days of the just-before-Christmas omnibus — loaded up with legislative priorities from both parties — are over.

“We are not going to return to the Christmas omnibus spending tradition, and that’s the commitment I’ve made to everyone,” Johnson told reporters after the House passed a stopgap funding measure Wednesday.

Pressed about whether he would promise not to put an omnibus on the floor in December, Johnson wouldn’t answer directly: “We’ve worked very hard to break that tradition ... and we’ll see what happens in December.”

Senior appropriators said Congress are likely to end up where they have before when they’ve faced a lame-duck, year-end funding deadline: with a sweeping omnibus spending package.

“I expect that we’ll negotiate an omnibus,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a member of the Appropriations Committee, noting that Johnson had said there would be no more CRs, then a new CR passed Wednesday.

“The speaker, respectfully, doesn’t have the ability to draw lines in the sand when he can’t even control his own caucus. They continually need Democrats to actually get anything done, and we are governing from the minority,” she continued. “And so I’m pretty confident that at the end of the day, we’re going to make sure that we pass omnibus funding.”

Far more House Democrats than Republicans voted for Wednesday's CR that will prevent a shutdown from starting next week, continuing a pattern of the minority’s carrying must-pass legislation through the lower chamber this Congress.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., predicted that the two parties could come to a deal and avoid a shutdown in December. But he said the results of the election will dictate what eventually happens.

Continued divided government could lead to tense negotiation, while, for example, if Republicans sweep the House, the Senate and the White House, they may push for another short-term funding patch into 2025, after they take the reins of power.

“I always worry about [a shutdown] until we don’t have to worry about it. But no, I don’t think so. I think we’ll get there,” Cole said of the possibility of a shutdown in December. “A lot will depend on who wins the election and what the president-elect, whether it’s Donald Trump or current Vice President Harris, want to do.”

While it’s impossible to predict who will come out on top on Nov. 5, Johnson is fighting to grow the House Republican majority, and he said Wednesday he'd like to remain speaker in the next Congress if the GOP manages to hold the House. So he’ll have to tread carefully as he negotiates a new funding deal in December, hoping not to alienate rank-and-file Republicans whose votes he may need to keep the speaker’s gavel.

Asked about an omnibus, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the Freedom Caucus who at times has clashed with Johnson, said Republicans will “fight it, take our case to the American people about how a Christmas omnibus will not be good for the American people, will rack up debt.”

And even though he voted no on the CR on Wednesday, Roy praised Johnson’s strategy on funding, assigning blame to the 14 Republicans who scuttled Johnson’s original plan to link a six-month funding bill to a Trump-backed bill, the SAVE Act, that would require proof of citizenship to vote. After that plan was defeated, Johnson struck a deal with Democrats on the clean, nearly three-month CR that will carry the government through December.

“I thought that what Speaker Johnson and all of us fought to put together on the floor was a noble effort to get it out of December, Goal 1, and Goal 2, to get the SAVE Act out there and fight for it and see what happens,” said Roy, the author of the SAVE Act.

Some Republicans, he said, “decided to kill it, so they got to answer to now we’ve got a CR into December. Congratulations, congressmen.”

The full House has already passed five of the 12 appropriations bills for the new fiscal year. The Senate Appropriations Committee sent 11 out of 12 spending bills to the floor, where none of them have had votes. Identical versions of all 12 bills need to pass both chambers of Congress every year to fund the government, which rarely happens, with recent Congresses relying heavily on CRs and omnibuses to keep the lights on.

"What Leader Schumer should have done is brought the appropriations bills to the floor. That way, some of them would have already been signed into law or would have been headed to the president's desk," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the top GOP appropriator in the upper chamber, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Conservative Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said he has deep concerns Congress will give up on trying to pass individual appropriations bills and lump everything together in one giant omnibus.

“Of course I do. Everybody does, because it’s the same thing that this town constantly repeats. We do some massive spending bill right before Christmas that nobody ever really sees because the deal’s been cut by the Four Corners,” Donald said, referring to the top congressional leaders: Johnson; Schumer; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

“They cut some deal with the White House and everybody goes home,” he said, “and the problems persist in our nation’s capital.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com