The House on Tuesday passed a stopgap measure to fund the government into 2024.
The chamber approved the short-term funding measure in a 336-95 vote, days before Friday evening’s shutdown deadline. Two Democrats and 93 Republicans opposed the bill.
Under suspension of the rules, the bill needed two-thirds support to pass the House and head to the Senate.
Also on Tuesday, attention in the Capitol has turned to a number of shouting matches and near-brawls on both sides of the building as tempers flare.
Follow along with live updates below.
Reps. Jake Auchincloss (Mass.) and Mike Quigley (Ill.) were the only two Democrats to vote against the continuing resolution.
Auchincloss cited the lack of Ukraine funding in the measure.
“When House Republicans took us to the brink in September, I vowed it would be the last time I’d vote to bail out their dysfunction without a clear, credible, and concrete plan for supporting Ukraine. Today, I am keeping my word,” he said in a statement.
He added, “Despite credible efforts that reflect the bipartisan majorities in both chambers in favor of aid, there is no clear and concrete plan from Republicans to demonstrate global leadership to friends and foes alike. I cannot support a short-term spending measure, cobbled together as the GOP careens from crisis to crisis, that fails to defend democracy.”
Quigly was the lone “no” vote on the Sept. 30 stopgap funding bill, also citing missing Ukraine aid.
The House on Tuesday passed a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown, sending the unconventional two-step continuing resolution to the Senate and marking the first major hurdle Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has cleared since winning the gavel.
The chamber approved the short-term funding measure in a 336-95 vote, days before Friday evening’s shutdown deadline. Two Democrats and 93 Republicans opposed the bill.
With conservatives opposed to the spending levels in the bill, Republican leaders leaned heavily on support from Democrats, who overwhelmingly backed the legislation despite strong reservations about the unusual two-part approach.
The bifurcated bill would extend funding at current levels for some agencies and programs until Jan. 19, and all others through Feb. 2. It would also extend the authorization of programs and authorities in the Farm Bill until Sept. 30, 2024.
The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it has support from both party leaders. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said he will try to pass the continuing resolution quickly, highlighting the bipartisan desire to avert a shutdown ahead of next week’s Thanksgiving holiday.
“We would like to do it as soon as possible,” Schumer told reporters. “Both McConnell and I want to avoid a shutdown so getting this done obviously before Friday at midnight — we know the Senate has lots of arcane rules. But McConnell and I are going to work together, we talked about this yesterday, to get it done as quickly as possible.”
— Mychael Schnell
The House is beginning to vote on the continuing resolution to fund the government into the new year.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed a formal ethics complaint against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused the ex-House leader of elbowing him in a hallway.
“This incident deserves immediate and swift investigation by the Ethics committee,” Gaetz wrote in a letter to House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and ranking member Susan Wild (D-Pa.) on Tuesday.
“Congress has seen a substantial increase in breaches of decorum unlike anything we have ever seen since the pre-Civil War era.”
McCarthy on Tuesday appeared to bump into Burchett as he passed in a Capitol hallway, which Burchett says was a deliberate elbow to his back.
But McCarthy later told reporters the interaction was not deliberate, and that he was simply moving past Burchett in a small hallway.
“I guess our elbows hit as I walked by,” McCarthy later told reporters, including CNN. “If I would hit somebody, they would I know hit them.”
Gaetz took Burchett’s side.
— Emily Brooks
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) accused former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of elbowing him in a Capitol hallway Tuesday and chased after the former House leader to confront him.
The incident began as Republicans were leaving a conference meeting early Tuesday and Burchett stopped to talked to reporters in the hall.
Not long after, McCarthy walked down the same hallway and appeared to bump into Burchett as he passed. Burchett says it was deliberate.
Burchett called after McCarthy at the time, while McCarthy kept walking. Burchett acknowledged he chased after McCarthy.
“I was like, ‘What the heck, you know, why did you do that?’” he said.
In remarks to reporters later, McCarthy denied elbowing the congressman. But Burchett is not backing down.
— Aris Folley
Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R), a former mixed martial arts fighter, nearly came to blows with the president of the Teamsters at a Senate hearing Tuesday, forcing Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to step in to stop a brawl from breaking out in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee room.
Mullin challenged International Brotherhood of Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien to a fight on the spot after the senator read aloud O’Brien’s tweets calling him out as a “clown” and a “fraud.”
“Sir, this is a time, this is a place. You want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults, we can finish it here,” Mullin said from the hearing room dais.
“OK, that’s fine. Perfect,” O’Brien shot back.
“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked. “Stand your butt up then.”
“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien retorted, prompting Mullin, who is 46 years old, to stand up from his chair as if he was preparing to spring into the middle of the hearing room to trade blows with the Teamster.
At that point, Sanders tried to take control of the hearing to stop an impromptu cage match from breaking out.
“Hold it. No, no, no, sit down. Sit down! You’re a United State senator, sit down,” Sanders yelled while banging the gavel to restore order in the room.
— Alexander Bolton
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has proposed a CR that would have some funding run out on Jan. 19, and the rest of the funding on Feb. 2 — an approach intended to discourage negotiation of a whole-of-government omnibus funding bill and to encourage the House and Senate to negotiate on the 12 regular funding bills.
The Jan. 19 date would be the funding deadline for government programs and agencies covered under regular appropriations bills pertaining to agriculture, rural development, and Food and Drug Administration; energy and water development; military construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development.
Funding for all other agencies and programs would run out on Feb. 2.
The bill also extends the authorization of programs and authorities in the Farm Bill until Sept. 30, 2024, the end of the fiscal year — essentially adding a one-year extension to those programs from the Farm Bill that passed in 2018.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) described the CR as a “big win” for Democrats, pointing specifically to the lack of any “poison pills” – partisan policy measures linked to the bill that would make it impossible for Democrats to support – and the 2023 funding levels that are in the bill.
“Two of the big things that we wanted are in this bill. I mean, it is a big win that it is 2023 levels – that is what we’ve said from the very beginning – and that it doesn’t contain any poison pills,” Jayapal said. “I think those are very significant wins for us.”
She added that she has “concerns” about the two-track approach to the CR, saying, “To me, that makes no sense,” and, “I worry that it’s two fiscal cliffs, but I think we’re going to have to weigh the fact that the Senate seems to have not acted.”
As chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Jayapal would not commit to backing the CR until she meets with members later today, but she reiterated optimism about the 2023 funding levels.
— Sarah Fortinsky
House Democrats are lining up behind the GOP’s short-term proposal to fund the government, predicting there will be plenty of bipartisan support to pass the legislation through the lower chamber this week and send it to the Senate.
Emerging from a closed-door caucus meeting in the Capitol basement on Tuesday morning, a host of Democrats, representing a wide cross-section of ideologies, said they intend to vote for the measure when it hits the floor later in the day.
“There’s gonna be a lot of Democratic votes,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said. “I’m inclined to be [among them]. I can’t really think of a compelling reason not to.”
The Democrats emphasized that they’re wary of the Republicans’ “laddered” approach, which splits the agencies into two different buckets and attaches different funding timelines to each one. But those concerns are minor, the lawmakers said, relative to their other priorities: Keeping spending at fiscal year 2023 levels and avoiding contentious policy provisions on conservative wish-list items like abortion and border security.
“I’m not sure it’ll be unanimous. But it looks to me like it addressed our major concerns,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said.
— Mike Lillis
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said he was inclined to support Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan for a continuing resolution (CR), which would require the support of a significant number of Democrats in order to reach the two-thirds threshold to pass under suspension of the rules.
Asked whether he expects the CR to get Democratic votes, McGovern said, “I assume so, yeah.” He said the party has not whipped votes yet, so he can’t say for sure whether it will get enough support to pass, but “The numbers seem pretty good to me.”
“The Farm Bill has been extended. The numbers are okay. None of their bullshit MAGA culture wars are in this bill. So, you know,” he said, “all said and done, I’m inclined to probably vote for it.”
McGovern said there are a “thousand” things Democrats would want in exchange for their support for the bill, saying, “I don’t have enough time to go into it. But we’re not cheap dates. So I mean, we’ll see.”
“I don’t understand why they’re going down this road but at the end of the day, I mean, we don’t want to shut the government down. But they seem like they’re itching to do so. And they’re fighting with themselves right now. So we’ll let that, we’ll let that play out,” he said.
— Sarah Fortinsky
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday defended his plan to fund the government into the new year, which has drawn the ire of conservatives within his party.
“We’re not surrendering, we’re fighting, but you have to be wise about choosing the fights. You’ve got to choose fights you can win and we’re going to and you’re going to see this House majority stand together on our principle and we’re going to do that,” he said.
“I’ve been at the job less than three weeks. I can’t turn an aircraft carrier overnight, but this was a very important first step to get us to the next stage, so that we can change how Washington works. And I think the laddered CR, the two-step CR is an important part of that.”
Asked about the fate of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was ousted after putting forward a “clean” continuing resolution, as Johnson has done, the Speaker said he wasn’t concerned.
“Kevin should take no blame for that. Kevin was in a very difficult situation when that happened. This is a different situation,” Johnson said.
Johnson said he was trying to get the country away from being in danger of a shutdown, but that “I’m done with short-term CRs.”
— Regina Zilbermints
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said Democrats were still evaluating Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) stopgap funding proposal but acknowledged there are no “poison pills” within the legislation.
“We’ve made clear that there should be no spending cuts. And we’ve made clear that there should be no poisonous political partisan policy provisions. Those are two important factors in our evaluation process,” Jeffries said coming out of a Democratic caucus meeting. “We continue to express concerns with the bifurcated deadlines that seem to be somewhat unprecedented. And we’re evaluating the potential adverse impact of that on the American people.”
The continuing resolution is moving under a suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds support and thus means it will need Democratic votes to pass.
Democratic leaders on Monday indicated they would be open to throwing their support behind the measure.
Asked on Tuesday whether enough Democrats would vote for the bill to pass it, Jeffries responded, “Stay tuned.”
— Mychael Schnell and Regina Zilbermints
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) defended Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) approach to moving the two-part CR and said he expects the bill to pass “on a bipartisan basis with big support from Republicans.”
“The Speaker’s statement was that we, Republicans, fully intend on funding the government. We’re doing it in a staggered way for the first time because we believe that is better for all parties to break it to two, knowing that it is going to take time to get it done,” Issa said.
He defended the approach for trying to pass something in regular order, rather than just doing one big omnibus bill, a move that has commonplace throughout the last decade or so.
“That’s not the right way to do it,” Issa said of omnibus bills. “So these short extensions to get us to the right way. We believe on a bipartisan basis, with big support from Republicans, was the speaker’s message, and I think it was – I know it was – well received.”
— Sarah Fortinsky
The Hill asked Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who served as Speaker pro tempore after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ouster, what he makes of some Republicans calling for McCarthy’s ouster after he moved on a clean continuing resolution but not doing so for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“You have to ask the people that did that, that took out the last Speaker — and how they can contort themselves into now supporting this Speaker making the same play call. It’s up to their acrobatics, their contortion to justify their position,” he responded.
— Emily Brooks
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) — chair of the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House — said he will not be voting in favor of the two-tiered continuing resolution this afternoon.
“We’re not cutting any spending,” Hern said.
His opposition is a signal that GOP defections could extend well beyond members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, which took an official position against the continuing resolution on Tuesday.
— Emily Brooks