Freedom Caucus pushes for stopgap into 2025 to avoid omnibus

The House Freedom Caucus adopted an official position in favor of adopting a continuing resolution to extend government funding past the end-of-year Sept. 30 deadline and until early 2025 with the intention of avoiding an end-of-year omnibus that could be favorable to Democrats.

The move from the hard-line conservative group amounts to a shot over the bow in the funding battle that will dominate Congress when it returns from August recess — and which will provide a critical test for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

In the official position released Monday, the Freedom Caucus also calls for pairing a stopgap measure with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill led by Freedom Caucus member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) to expand proof-of-citizenship requirements to vote in federal elections and impose voter roll purge requirements on states. The House passed the bill in June. 

“The House Freedom Caucus believes that House Republicans should return to Washington to continue the work of passing all 12 appropriations bills to cut spending and advance our policy priorities. If unsuccessful, in the inevitability that Congress considers a Continuing Resolution, government funding should be extended into early 2025 to avoid a lame duck omnibus that preserves Democrat spending and policies well into the next administration,” the group said in the official position. 

“Furthermore, the Continuing Resolution should include the SAVE Act – as called for by President Trump – to prevent non-citizens from voting to preserve free and fair elections in light of the millions of illegal aliens imported by the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years,” it added.

Official positions from the Freedom Caucus require support from 80 percent of the group, which consists of around three dozen members. In the razor-thin House majority, that is enough to sink any measure uniformly opposed by Democrats but cannot stop a measure that has significant bipartisan support.

Even before leaving for August recess, lawmakers forecast that the House’s funding battles over spending — with infighting resulting in GOP leadership pulling scheduled votes on several appropriations bills — would turn away from the individual bills and toward the structure of a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown Oct. 1. For hard-line conservatives, an end-of-year omnibus negotiated by party leaders, which has often resulted in increased spending and funding for policies they oppose, is the worst-case scenario. 

Asked in an interview with The Hill last week about the push to extend government funding into 2025, Johnson said he was “thinking about all those alternatives.” 

“We’re having some very thoughtful discussion about the pros and cons of the various strategies on it, and that decision is not yet determined, but it will be very soon,” Johnson said, adding that he didn’t think it would “behoove the country” to have a shutdown.

A release introducing the Freedom Caucus position said the group aimed to ensure that Democrats “cannot undermine President Trump’s second term with a ‘lame duck’ omnibus in December.”

Other House Republicans have worried that extending government funding past the end of the year could backfire, because a Trump victory in 2024 — let alone the party keeping control of the House and winning the Senate — is not certain, and extending funding could give Democrats the chance to enact an even more liberal funding plan than what a lame-duck President Biden could sign in a December omnibus.

In addition, Republicans opposed to the Freedom Caucus position worry that even if Trump wins, a funding battle in Congress as he reestablishes himself in the White House would only distract from other pressing priorities.

Johnson suggested to The Hill that it was not “obvious” that a continuing resolution would even be necessary, noting that the House has passed several spending bills to fund the bulk of government. 

But with just 13 voting days scheduled in the House before the end of the fiscal year, avoiding a continuing resolution is highly unlikely. The Senate has passed no funding bills. Those the House has passed — accounting for roughly half of the 12 “regular” appropriations bills — are partisan, and would need more negotiation to clear the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

Congress has not followed its own dictated process of approving all 12 appropriations bills to fund the government before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 since 1997.

Whatever position Johnson takes to avoid a shutdown could be consequential for him. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted from his position just days after he pushed through a “clean” continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown, with several of the eight members who voted to oust him citing his position on funding matters. McCarthy maintains that those who ousted him like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, had more personal vendettas.