The House passed a stopgap package Friday evening that pushes the government funding deadline to March, as Congress races to avoid a looming deadline that would shut down the government in six hours.
The package passed 366-34, with the support of 196 Democrats and 170 Republicans. It now moves to the Senate, where leaders are hoping to lock in an agreement to fast-track final passage of the measure, racing against the midnight government shutdown deadline.
The package’s passage seemingly ends a chaotic 48 hours, after Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump worked to spike a previously-negotiated bipartisan funding agreement. The package that passed the House includes more than $110 billion in disaster aid and a one-year farm bill extension but is stripped of Trump’s demand: a debt limit extension.
Musk weighed in just before the vote, commending Speaker Mike Johnson for having done “a good job here, given the circumstances,” while noting that many previously agreed upon policies were left out of the measure the House ultimately passed. “It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces,” Musk posted on X, his social media platform.
Across the Capitol, leaders in the Senate will need agreement from all 100 senators in order to clear the stopgap quickly, but at least one Republican senator is seeking a promise of votes on offsets before they'll agree to fast-tracking the bill. House leaders needed to clear a two-thirds majority threshold to advance the measure, because Johnson brought it to the floor under a process meant to get around conservatives who have blocked spending bills brought up under simple majority threshold.
The progress comes after a week of chaos and House Republican infighting after a previous stopgap spending agreement brokered by Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer collapsed under pressure from Trump and Musk. A stripped down Trump-backed proposal with a debt limit increase failed dramatically on the floor Thursday night.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Friday night that Johnson showed “tremendous leadership this week through very difficult times.”
“At the end of the day, I think everybody recognizes it makes sense to keep government open, but also to take care of those disaster victims who have been waiting for months for this relief and the farmers who are struggling,” Scalise said. “There's a lot of good that's going to be done in this bill.”
Johnson has repeatedly had to rely on overwhelming Democratic support to pass funding bills, a fact that could haunt him in his bid to keep the speakership on Jan. 3. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has already pledged that he will vote against Johnson, who will have a razor-thin majority next year, which means every defection is a legitimate threat to his leadership.
The House GOP conference rejected a proposal backed by Massie to hold separate votes on a government funding bill, farm aid and money for natural disasters. Johnson would then have brought the three-bill package up under a so-called rule, which would require him to get near unified GOP support.
Under the House-passed stopgap, government funding will again run dry on March 14. Lawmakers hope to clear a spending package before then with new funding levels for fiscal 2025, which will be half over by then. The March deadline will allow the incoming Trump administration to get involved in a final funding deal.
