Congress returns to deal with looming federal spending deadline

WASHINGTON – Congress returned to Washington on Monday with limited time to prevent a government shutdown and November’s elections already clouding conversations over federal financing.

Funding for the federal government expires Sept. 30, when the 2024 fiscal year ends. Without new legislation, the government would shut down while millions of voters, including in some battleground states, are already able to cast their votes.

Congress is set to consider a stopgap funding bill, called a continuing resolution or CR, to keep operations going at current levels and buy legislators more time to craft annual spending bills. Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden united Monday to reject House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) effort to pair an unusually long six-month CR with unrelated legislation to require voters to show proof of citizenship before registering to vote in federal elections.

Biden threatened to veto Johnson’s proposal, which the House could vote on as soon as this week. But that plan faces opposition from even senior House Republicans, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told The Washington Post in an interview that Johnson lacked the clout for the approach to be taken seriously.

“At this point, we return to Washington and it’s not clear what leverage extreme MAGA Republicans think they have when they’re unable to pass appropriations bills on their own,” Jeffries told The Post. “We are not going to pay an extreme ransom note because the far right is trying to jam its ideology down the throats of the American people.”

Johnson’s CR would expire March 28 and would carry with it the noncitizen voting measure, which passed the House in July.

Noncitizen voting is already illegal in federal races, and election administration experts say the proposal could wreak havoc on the ability of states to run elections.

“House Republicans are taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process,” Johnson said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections.”

Democrats - and even some senior House Republicans - prefer a continuing resolution that extends until just after the November vote, allowing lawmakers in an end-of-year “lame duck” session to hammer out funding bills with fewer political consequences for either side and freeing whoever is president come January from an early spending fight.

“I would rather get these fiscal year 2025 bills out of the way so that when you do have Trump in the White House, you have a Republican House and Republican Senate, we can spend the beginning of this next Republican presidency not dealing with last year’s battles, but dealing with the very, very ambitious agenda the President Trump has put forward,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, told The Post.

The disagreement is not much of an impasse, lawmakers say. The most likely scenario, officials from both parties privately concede, is that Democrats will reject the voting restrictions while Republicans demand the March funding deadline.

But Johnson could struggle to win concessions for his preferred timeline. House Republicans have struggled for more than a year to pass government funding bills, and some GOP lawmakers refuse to vote for CRs under any scenario. That could compel the speaker to seek Democratic votes for the bill, weakening his hand in later negotiations with the Senate and the White House.

Johnson could get help from several Democrats even if some Republicans defect on his bill this week. Vulnerable Democrats - Reps. Jared Golden (Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), Don Davis (N.C.), Henry Cuellar (Tex.), and Vicente Gonzalez (Tex.) - voted with Republicans to pass the noncitizen voting bill earlier this summer and have often supported clean funding extensions.

Jeffries said he has not spoken to those five since arriving back in Washington about how they’ll vote, but acknowledged that Democrats have to “make a decision about what’s best for their constituents.”

The longer bill will force Congress later this calendar year to consider additional spending legislation for other programs set to expire before March or those that need supplemental resources.

The Department of Veterans Affairs requires an additional $15 billion: $3 billion to make up for a looming benefits shortfall, and $12 billion in resources to provide care for military service members suffering from the effects of toxic burn pits. House appropriators introduced legislation Friday to make up for the benefits needs, but have not addressed the remaining issues.

Portions of the farm bill, the massive five-year agriculture policy legislation, expire Sept. 30, and others expire at the end of the year. Lawmakers considered attaching a one-year farm bill extension to the CR, but opted against it.

Leaders from both parties favor providing Maryland additional money to rebuild Baltimore’s collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. That, along with funding for other failing roadways, could cost up to $3.1 billion. Those funds were also not included in the CR.

“We need a continuing resolution because House Republicans let their most extreme members drive the ship. A continuing resolution that ends in December - rather than one that lasts a half year - is better for our national security and military readiness, veterans and their families, victims recovering from natural disasters and all hardworking American taxpayers,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

The relative calm in the spending debate is tenuous. Election momentum could change the political calculus of either side.

House Democrats are bullish on their chances of winning the majority, and with a March deadline could control the levers of power to write their own funding bills if they hold the Senate and the White House. Republicans, also eyeing a sweep of Congress and the White House, see the later deadline as a chance to solidify their legislative priorities, too.

But pushing the funding fight into 2025 would complicate the next president’s first 100 days in office, when Democrats would hope to expand voting rights and pursue new social spending for child care and other programs, and Republicans would try to pass a sweeping tax law.

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump could also influence the government funding picture. Trump and Republican officials nationwide have falsely spread rumors that noncitizen voting could sway the outcome of the presidential race. In fact, noncitizens casting ineligible ballots is vanishingly rare. But as Trump makes the innuendo a larger part of his campaign, some of his chief backers in Congress could feel compelled to demand voter eligibility restrictions remain part of the continuing resolution. And Republicans hope to use the issue to force vulnerable Democrats to discuss immigration, a policy area where polls show conservatives with a clear political advantage.