Federal shutdown looms as Sen. Schumer, Speaker Johnson urge Congress to act quickly

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday will take the first step in a process to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of this week, which could create delays for travelers, halt some veterans’ services and shut some federal offices on Long Island.

The package of stopgap appropriations, set at the 2023 levels with no policy changes or conditions, is expected to garner support from most senators and representatives but faces opposition in the House from the conservative Freedom Caucus, whose members want bigger spending cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said he would hold procedural votes when Congress reconvenes Tuesday afternoon and final votes later in the week on a package of short-term spending bills to keep the government open into March.

“I am urging Congress to act quickly and avoid the shutdown,” Schumer said at a news conference Sunday about the legislation to keep the government open. “And I hope we get strong bipartisan support for that legislation.”

Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted the language of the short-term spending bill Sunday evening.

The bill negotiated by Schumer and Johnson over the weekend would extend the Jan. 19 and Feb. 9 deadlines they had set in November for agreeing to final 2024 government spending levels to March 1 and March 8.

Spending Toplines

Congressional appropriators need extra time to hash out the line-by-line details for the overall spending levels that Schumer and Johnson, the top two leaders in Congress, and President Joe Biden agreed to a week ago.

That agreement calls for $886 billion in defense funding and $772 billion in domestic, nondefense spending, including $69 billion called for in a side deal to the debt ceiling bill that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached last year with the White House.

This bipartisan agreement only includes funding for government operations until the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

It does not include another funding package that is a political battleground: Biden’s request for $106 billion in supplemental funds for Israel and Ukraine for their wars, additional funding for the U.S. Defense Department and money to address the U.S. southern border crisis.

Freedom Caucus lawmakers thundered against the short-term spending deal and have pressured Johnson, who was a caucus member before becoming speaker, to disavow the agreement and demand more spending cuts. Johnson has reaffirmed his support for the deal.

“This is what surrender looks like,” the House Freedom Caucus wrote Sunday in a post on X, the social media site formerly called Twitter.

The Freedom Caucus wields considerable clout in the House because Republicans hold a slim majority that allows just a handful of members to sink any measure in a party-line vote.

“A shutdown is the wrong thing to do,” Schumer said at the Sunday news conference.

“A majority of Democrats and Republicans don’t want to shut down, but there’s a group — a hard right group particularly in the House, some in the Senate, who want to bully their way into forcing a shutdown,” he said. “That cannot happen.”

The Votes

On Tuesday, Schumer will hold a procedural vote needing 60 ayes to move on to a simple majority vote on the package itself, probably on Thursday or Friday.

The Senate is expected to pass the procedural and final votes given the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and several other Senate Republicans.

The House would take up the package after the Senate has approved it.

Johnson will bring up the bill under suspension, a parliamentary procedure requiring bipartisan approval by two-thirds of the House members voting.

That means Johnson will need nearly 80 Republican aye votes if all Democrats votes yes.

In a signal to his members on how to vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn) said in a statement Sunday he strongly supports passage of the short-term spending bills to avoid a shutdown.

Johnson also urged his Republican caucus to support the agreement, calling it a step forward in what Republicans are trying to achieve: ending massive omnibus bills for appropriations, Republican policy wins and “better stewardship of American tax dollars.”