Congress once again passed a short-term funding patch to prevent a partial government shutdown, punting the ongoing spending fight for a few more days.
The bill easily passed the House and Senate on Thursday, and is expected to be signed by President Biden ahead of the Friday midnight deadline to fund the government.
Lawmakers are hopeful that the latest stopgap will be the last, but while the measure gives Congress until March 8 and March 22 to wrap up spending work, it does not solve the body’s lingering spending issues.
A component of the deal among congressional leaders to produce the new short-term funding patch included teeing up future votes on a pair of spending packages that divide up the dozen funding bills needed to fund the government.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said that the plan was to ensure the government was fully funded by the last deadline, but that it was up to House Speaker Mike Johnson to follow through.
“That is the commitment that the speaker made to us yesterday, and we’re counting on him to follow through,” Mr. Schumer said
However, the packages are contrary to the House GOP’s goal of passing spending legislation bills one by one.
Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, argued that breaking the reliance on a massive, catch-all spending bill, known as an omnibus bill, was a break from the status quo.
“This is the way it works, every year, always has,” Mr. Johnson told reporters Thursday. “Except that we’ve instituted some new innovations. We broke the omnibus fever, right? That’s how Washington has been run for years.”
Some lawmakers have been critical of Mr. Johnson’s approach, arguing that the latest deal was struck behind closed doors without input from members. The text for the first spending package, which includes funding legislation for the VA, interior, agriculture, transportation, energy and water, and commerce, science and justice, has not yet been released to members.
Sen. Patty Murray, Washington Democrat and Appropriations Committee chair, said on the Senate floor that the first six bills would be released soon to give lawmakers plenty of time to review them ahead of an expected vote next week while negotiators “continue to lock up the last six bills.”
“I’m confident we can get all of our funding bills done in the next few weeks so long as partisan poison pills are taken off the table,” Ms. Murray said. “We are working in a divided government, that means to get anything done, we have to work together in good faith to reach reasonable outcomes.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, said that breaking the bills into smaller packages is exactly how Congress has handled spending in years past, and breaks the promise of passing bills one at a time.
“This is exactly what we said we would not do at the beginning of this Congress,” Mr. Massie said. “This is the exact way that it’s been done for the 12 years that I’ve been here.”
Congress has not passed spending bills one at a time — a process known as regular order — since the late 1990s, and only four times since 1977.
Some have blamed this spending cycle’s prolonged stagnation on conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, who have torpedoed the House GOP’s spending agenda on more than one occasion to get more conservative policy riders attached to spending bills and to achieve deeper spending cuts.
Rep. Garret Graves, Louisiana Republican, said that all the delay was “a complete waste of time,” because Congress is sticking with roughly the same spending levels negotiated by then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden.
“We would have had all 12 appropriations bills passed in the House if it wasn’t for this chaos caucus in Congress,” Mr. Graves said.
Others, including Mr. Johnson, are hopeful that the stopgap bill will give Congress an extra bit of time to conclude spending work and move on to the Fiscal 2025 cycle, which has been delayed by spending stagnation in Washington.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said that the latest stopgap should be the last, and would allow for Congress to shift gears and focus on other impending spending work, like President Biden’s foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
“We owe it to the American people to do our due diligence in reaching the end of this process,” Ms. DeLauro said.