Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the House will vote on a government funding bill on Friday morning.
“We’re expecting votes this morning. So y’all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan,” he said. Asked if they had reached a new agreement, he added: “We’ll see.”
While no decision has been made, multiple members say there are discussions about passing a short-term stopgap that would only punt funding into mid-January. That would avert a shutdown and allow lawmakers to go home for the holidays, though they'd return to the same problems in the new year.
The discussions around a short-term funding patch option include moving a separate disaster aid package, similar if not the exact same, as the $110 billion one Republicans negotiated with Democrats in the original stopgap agreement, according to two Republicans. Still, GOP lawmakers caution that everything is very much in flux.
“Anybody who's telling you there's an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves," said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.).
But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told a gaggle of reporters outside of the speaker's office that the bill they plan to put forth would likely be similar to the Donald Trump-backed version that failed on the House floor by a wide margin Thursday evening. She said the vote was planned for 10 a.m.
“I think we’re very close to a deal,” she said, adding that it’s “very close to President Trump’s plan yesterday.”
Johnson and House conservatives are huddling in his office Friday morning as a government shutdown deadline looms in less than 24 hours. Separately, House Democrats are scheduled to have a closed-door meeting later in the morning as they wait to see what happens next.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
