WASHINGTON — House Republicans and Senate Democrats, trying to avert a partial government shutdown, negotiated an agreement Wednesday to extend government funding deadlines for a time.
The bipartisan agreement will give Congress until March 8 to pass the six budget bills that lawmakers have finalized and until March 22 to pass another six bills that are still under negotiation and provide key funding for defense, health care and homeland security.
The agreement comes five months after the start of the fiscal year, well beyond the deadline lawmakers were expected to meet in fiscal 2024. If passed, the short-term spending extension would avoid a partial government shutdown, which for some agencies would begin at midnight Friday and the rest on March 8.
The House will likely suspend the bill, which requires two-thirds support. To meet that deadline, the Senate will need the approval of all 100 of its members, including several who like to hold off on government funding deals.
Four top congressional leaders and four appropriations committee leaders announced the plan Wednesday evening in a joint statement.
“We agree that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government,” they wrote.
“To allow the House and Senate Appropriations Committees sufficient time to substantially implement this agreement, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters, and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term, continuing resolution on funding the agency through March 8 and 22, and the House and Senate will vote on them this week,” the eight-member group added.
Lawmakers announced they had finalized the agriculture, FDA, energy and water, military construction, VA and transportation, HUD bills, all of which were scheduled to go into effect by Friday under the current stopgap spending bill.
They also mediated in reaching an agreement on bills relating to spending on trade, justice, science, home affairs and the environment.
The remaining six spending bills – Defense, Financial Services and General Government, Homeland Security, Workforce Education, HHS, Legislative Branch and Foreign Operations – were scheduled to be settled by March 22 under the fresh short-term extension.
The lawmakers’ statement did not indicate when the texts of the agreed bills were published or the short-term spending bill, which Congress will have to pass by Friday to slightly extend their deadlines.
Short-term extensions
Congress was supposed to complete a dozen annual appropriations bills before the start of the current fiscal year on Oct. 1, but it passed a series of short-term funding extensions to give itself more time for negotiations.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, and the Biden administration negotiated an agreement on overall spending levels on discretionary defense and non-defense spending last summer when they brokered a debt ceiling deal.
But House Republicans moved away from those spending levels when crafting the original batch of budget bills.
Current House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, renegotiated spending levels with President Joe Biden in early January.
Johnson had to do it make a public statement about a week later at the U.S. Capitol, saying he would stick with the agreement despite comments from some members of the House Republican Conference that he was ready to walk away from it.
This agreement set funding levels at $886.3 billion for defense and $772.7 billion for domestic discretionary spending.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky; Johnson; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat; Senate Appropriations Chairman Patty Murray, Democrat from Washington state; Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Committee Susan Collins, Republican from Maine; House Appropriations Chairman Kay Granger, Republican from Texas; and House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, announced the agreement.
