House passes bill to avert government shutdown after whirlwind funding fight

The House approved legislation to avert a government shutdown hours before the deadline Friday, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration after a whirlwind week on Capitol Hill.

The chamber voted 366-34-1 in support of the legislation, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed for passage since GOP leadership brought the bill to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process. All Democrats except one — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), who voted present — joined 170 Republicans in voting yes.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters that the upper chamber could move on the continuing resolution Friday. Lawmakers are staring down a midnight deadline.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), after the vote, lauded the legislation as "'America First' legislation because it allows us to be set up to deliver for the American people."

"In January, we will make a sea change in Washington. President Trump will return to D.C. and to the White House, and we will have Republican control of the Senate and the House. Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that, that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending for 2025," he said.

The package — which Johnson rolled out shortly before the vote — would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill for one year and appropriate billions of dollars in disaster relief and assistance for farmers.

The legislation does not, however, include language to increase the debt limit, an eleventh-hour demand from President-elect Trump that hurled a curveball into the sensitive government funding negotiations.

In lieu of the debt ceiling hike, Republicans entered into an agreement to increase the borrowing limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net cuts to spending, done through a reconciliation package in the next Congress, two sources told The Hill.

House passage of the government funding plan marks the culmination of a tumultuous three days on Capitol Hill. Republicans cycled through four different spending proposals, grappled with the influence of Trump and Elon Musk and, for some, grew increasingly frustrated with Johnson’s handling of the situation.

It is just a preview of what is expected to be a chaotic period in Washington, with Republicans poised to hold a slim majority in the House and GOP lawmakers preparing to legislate at the whims of the incoming Trump administration.

In the short term, meanwhile, questions are mounting about whether Johnson will be able to keep hold of the gavel on Jan. 3, when he takes his Speaker nomination to the House chamber for a floor vote. Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of Republicans during that vote.

House Republicans unanimously nominated Johnson to be Speaker in November, but their discontent with him has grown since — particularly in light of his leadership throughout the funding fight.

“We're legislating by Braille here,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been public in his decision not to support Johnson next month. "I think this wasn't handled well, and then I still have all the grievances from last at the beginning of this year, FISA, Ukraine, all of those things. I think there's going to be a reckoning eventually."

The funding deal cleared on Friday was the fourth proposal Johnson unveiled throughout the government funding debacle.

First, he rolled out a bipartisan, bicameral package negotiated by top lawmakers that would extend funding through March 14 while also including a number of extraneous policy provisions. The Speaker, however, never brought it to the floor amid Trump’s opposition.

Next came a proposal to fund the government until mid-March and suspend the debt limit for two years, an attempt to cater to Trump’s fourth-quarter demand. Democrats and a group of Republicans, however, torpedoed that measure, sending Johnson back to the drawing board.

On Friday morning, lawmakers floated splitting the funding package into three components to hold separate votes on a continuing resolution, disaster aid and assistance for farmers that would be considered under a procedural rule. But after a closed-door conference, Johnson opted for the single spending bill that included disaster aid and assistance for farmers, moving to consider it under the fast-track process.

“We will not have a government shutdown,” Johnson said. “And we will meet our obligations for our farmers who need aid, for the disaster victims all over the country, and for making sure that military and essential services and everyone who relies upon the federal government for a paycheck gets paid over the holidays.”

And after a quick caucus meeting, several House Democrats said they would back the measure.

A bulk of the funding in the stopgap plan would go toward disaster aid, with about $100 billion in relief amid increased bipartisan pressure in both chambers following hurricanes Helene and Milton. 

Some of the biggest line items in the disaster aid portion includes almost $29 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund as officials have warned of dwindling funds in recent weeks.

There’s about $2 billion in funding for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loans program, which businesses and homeowners rely on for low-interest loans to recover from disasters. Of that amount, $50 million is assigned to the Office of Inspector General for the SBA for audits and reviews of disaster loan and disaster loan programs. Officials said the program ran out of funds during hurricane season.

More than $20 billion would go toward the Department of Agriculture for disaster aid, while lawmakers also agreed on an additional $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, as well as about $8 million for oversight under the Office of the Inspector General. 

There’s also upward of $12 billion in funding included for the Environmental Protection Agency, and the departments of Agriculture Forest Service and the Interior that negotiators say is important to address consequences of disasters in 2024 and in recent years.

But many Democrats have criticized the skimmed down version of the funding agreement they struck with GOP leadership earlier this week. 

“They want to take out things like cancer care for children, things like reforms for the pharmacy benefit managers that lower prices of drugs for Americans. They want to take out community health centers,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said of Republicans. 

Some House Republicans have also lamented the chipping away of previous add-ons that had buy-in from both sides of the aisle, particularly on the health care end, and have called out Trump allies like Musk for spreading misinformation about some of the contents of the earlier funding package.

Additional items that had come under fire in the original bipartisan funding plan that have since been scrubbed included measures that would transfer administrative jurisdiction over the RFK stadium to D.C., and language that would have allowed cost-of-living adjustments for lawmakers' salaries for the first time in years.