House passes bill to fund the government until after midterm elections

The House passed a stopgap bill to fund the government into December in an effort to avoid another government shutdown weeks before the midterms, but the effort faces an uphill climb in the Senate.

The resolution, which would fund the government through Dec. 4, passed 220-205.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) pushed the measure to preempt a showdown with Democrats in the fall over government funding as lawmakers are unlikely to meet a Sept. 30 deadline ahead of the new fiscal year.

Internal divisions among Republicans in the House — and a standoff between Democrat and GOP appropriators in the Senate over defense spending — has left lawmakers behind on passing the necessary 12 appropriations bills.

A shutdown before the midterms could potentially reflect poorly upon Republicans as the party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress.

While stopgap measures normally garner bipartisan support, the House bill drew backlash from a majority of Democrats on Tuesday.

In a statement ahead of the vote, House Democratic leaders — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), Minority Leader Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts), and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-California) — said they would not be voting for the stopgap measure because it gives the Trump administration “even more power over the federal budget and fails to block funding for Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine.”

The House-passed stopgap bill is a nonstarter in the Senate, where Republicans would need the support of at least seven Democrats to advance it.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington), the lead Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told The Post on Tuesday that she opposes the House resolution and is instead working with Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) to draft their own bill to temporarily extend government funding.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said he’ll bring a bipartisan agreement to fund the government to the floor before the August break. That measure would then need to be approved by the House when lawmakers return at the end of August before it goes to Trump’s desk.

House Republicans are already laying the blame on Democrats if the Senate fails to pass a stopgap funding bill, arguing Democratic opposition to the House-passed resolution would be responsible for a shutdown.

“If the Democrats can’t support this basic principle, then they alone are going to own the chaos that ensues if the government shuts down after September 30th,” Johnson said Tuesday.

House Republicans will next proceed to advancing another budget priority, a framework for a $95 billion reconciliation package that Republicans could pass without Democratic support.

The framework authorizes $10 billion for election-related measures, $12 billion for American farmers grappling with the impacts of tariffs and inflation, and $73 billion for the Pentagon as it runs urgently low on cash largely due to the Iran war.

House GOP leaders hope to vote on the framework later this week with the goal of passing the legislation before the midterms, despite pushback from some members of their own conference and Senate Republicans.

Trump administration officials, including Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, met with House Republicans on Tuesday to press them on moving the framework forward.

Trump has demanded Republicans pass a third reconciliation package that he originally wanted to include $350 billion for defense spending and the Save America Act, which would impose stricter requirements for voting. The White House also requested $20 billion in aid for farmers.

While the $95 billion package is much narrower than what Trump originally requested, he urged House Republicans in a Truth Social post on Monday “to VOTE YES” on the framework.

One of the top concerns among fiscally conservative Republicans is that the bill does not include any budget cuts to offset new spending, something they demanded to avoid driving the nation’s $39 trillion debt figure higher.

As they left the meeting Tuesday morning, some of the more hard-line Republicans said they still had issues with the framework’s composition.

“I don’t think they’ve made a very compelling pitch,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) said of House GOP leaders. Burchett complained that House leadership has not done enough to prioritize bills that would cut the deficit rather than add to it.

Multiple Senate Republicans have said they do not support the $95 billion package or do not believe it is possible to pass it through the chamber.

Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.