WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson is prepping a stopgap funding extension ahead of this month’s deadline that combines some red meat for conservatives with policies that lawmakers in both parties will likely find attractive.
According to sources familiar with the discussions, the Louisiana Republican’s plan would pair a six-month continuing resolution with House-passed legislation aimed at ensuring noncitizens can’t vote in federal elections.
The length of the stopgap measure, if enacted, would ensure that lawmakers won’t get jammed with a lame-duck omnibus package right before Christmas, while punting final spending decisions into the new year and a new Congress — possibly with more GOP leverage to shape the outcome.
In addition, the measure is expected to include a one-year extension of farm bill programs that would otherwise expire Sept. 30, since neither chamber’s multiyear reauthorization package has reached the floor and won’t be reconciled by the deadline.
Billions of dollars to address shortfalls in Department of Veterans Affairs programs identified by the department over the summer as well as in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s main disaster relief account will be included as well, according to sources familiar with the talks.
The current plan is to take up the measure next week when the House returns from its summer break. At least in theory, that would give a reluctant Senate time to make tweaks and send back a new version before the Sept. 30 deadline to avert a partial government shutdown.
Cuts not included
The six-month CR, which would kick final decisions on fiscal 2025 spending to March, would largely be at current funding levels, without the steep nondefense cuts that some conservatives have angled for. But House Republicans have struggled to pass their own versions of fiscal 2025 spending bills; just five out of 12 have passed so far, largely defense-related measures.
They were able to pass a State-Foreign Operations bill heavy on cuts, but the only austere domestic bill to pass so far — Interior-Environment — was a close call and might not have passed if not for several Democratic absences. Another bill, the Legislative Branch measure, went down to unexpected defeat on the floor, and GOP leaders scrapped plans to take up any of the other bills before the summer recess.
Other typical funding “anomalies,” or increases above current levels, as well as legislative riders — including those submitted as part of White House wish lists late last week — could be added as sweeteners. Still, the package would face a slim path to House passage given the likelihood that few if any Democrats would support the measure.
In July, all Republicans and just five Democrats voted to pass the stand-alone voting eligibility bill. President Donald Trump has urged the GOP to include the measure in any stopgap funding measure, even at the risk of a partial government shutdown if lawmakers can’t pass a CR as a result.
A House leadership aide said the stopgap bill’s length and the decision to attach the voting restriction bill is an effort to lock in support across the conference and convince conservatives who traditionally vote against CRs to back this one.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a leader of the House Freedom Caucus and chief sponsor of the voting bill — nicknamed the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or “SAVE Act” for short — said Tuesday he could get behind that sort of combo package.
“Yes, we’ll fund the government into March, even though it has a lot of crap … we don’t like,” Roy said on “Bannon’s War Room,” a podcast founded by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who’s now in prison on a contempt of Congress conviction. “But what we want to do is say we’re going to give [government spending] to President Trump’s administration to fix, and we’re going to demand that our elections are secure.”
While federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections, bill supporters point to states being unable to actually verify the citizenship status of prospective voters in some circumstances. Roy’s bill, introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in that chamber, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship alongside voter registration and clarify that states can remove noncitizens from voter rolls.
The White House in July said President Joe Biden “strongly opposes” the bill, though the official statement of administration policy did not use the term “veto.”
“This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls,” the White House statement said.
‘Partisan scare tactic’
Even if the stopgap package with the proof-of-citizenship language passes the House, it faces a steep climb in the Senate, where the majority Democrats have said they won’t take it up.
Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., called the bill a “partisan scare tactic” last month after Freedom Caucus members unveiled their stopgap bill demands. And she has repeatedly said she believes that the appropriations process should wrap up this calendar year, before a new administration and Congress takes over in January.
“Demanding outrageous partisan poison pills is a nonstarter — we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends,” Murray said.
Senate Democrats prefer a CR with an end date in mid-to-late November or early-to-mid December, according to sources. That would give them the option to come back after the elections and negotiate a lame-duck funding package, or if those talks collapse, lawmakers could still pass another CR into the new calendar year.
Even if senators round up 60 votes for an amended package that moves the expiration date forward and drops the House-passed voting eligibility provisions, as currently expected, it could give Republicans a talking point to use in the campaign’s final stretch.
“If it’s a ‘nonstarter’ with Democrats to deter noncitizens from voting, they’re going to have to explain that,” Lee posted this week on X, formerly Twitter.
A vote against the bill could be used against endangered Democrats like Sen. Jon Tester from deep-red Montana, for instance, which is part of a 22-state coalition of attorneys general calling on Congress to pass the measure.
The House-passed bill “protects our elections from illegal immigrants and upholds the rule of law,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and 21 other state attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders in July.
