House Republicans have been pushing for passage of spending bills individually in order to take positions ahead of negotiations with the Senate, but with the November 17 deadline arriving fast, discussion already has started on another stopgap measure. Image: DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffWith the House back at work after a three-week pause while it had no speaker, prospects seem to have improved for Congress enacting another stopgap funding measure ahead of the November 17 expiration of the current “continuing resolution” but no firm plan has yet taken shape for such a measure to prevent a partial government shutdown.
With last week’s election of Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as the new House speaker, that chamber has returned to floor voting on the 12 regular appropriations bills for the fiscal year that already is a month old. If the House gets through its planned roster for this week, it will have passed eight of those.
The Senate meanwhile has a package of three still up for floor voting, with other bills also likely to be voted on in groups in order to speed up the process. During preliminary voting last week, a majority of the Senate backed an amendment to prevent future shutdowns by keeping spending at current levels after any funding deadlines, but the measure did not receive the 60 votes needed.
House Republicans have been pushing for passage of spending bills individually in order to take positions ahead of negotiations with the Senate, but with the November 17 deadline arriving fast, discussion already has started on another stopgap measure.
One key consideration would be how long such a measure would last—January 15 has been a frequently mentioned date but dates as late as April 15 also have been raised. That would give Congress more time to finalize regular spending bills, although it could trigger an automatic cutting mechanism—in the law passed in the spring to suspend the debt ceiling—if any stopgap funding is still in place at the turn of the year. Also, it would leave agencies with less time to adjust to any reductions in spending levels.
Difficulties lie ahead even if Congress buys that additional time because of numerous policy differences and the overall lower spending levels in the House versions that the White House already has signaled that it would veto rather than accept.
Unlike his predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., whose willingness to work with Democrats allowed for passage of both the debt ceiling law and the first stopgap—the latter of which led to his ouster—Johnson has a record of strict partisanship on budgetary matters.
In the 2019-2020 Congress he headed the House Republican Study Committee, a caucus of fiscal conservatives. During his tenure in that position—as before, and after—that group recommended numerous changes to make federal employee benefits less valuable, for example by requiring higher employee contributions toward retirement, basing future benefits on a reduced calculation, and requiring FEHB enrollees to pay a greater share of the total premiums.
In his new role as speaker, Johnson already has floated the idea of creating a bipartisan commission on federal deficits; recommendations from the last such commission, the Simpson-Bowles Commission during the Obama administration, among other things laid the groundwork for a three-year freeze on federal salary rates.
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