By New York Post (Politics) | Created at 2025-03-09 22:41:04 | Updated at 2025-03-10 05:06:19
6 hours ago
Republicans are scrambling to pull off a feat they’ve been unable to do since retaking the House in 2023 — avert a government shutdown without leaning on Democratic support.
On Saturday, House GOP leadership unveiled a short-term funding bill to avert yet another looming shutdown at midnight Friday and keep the lights on through September. But there are a few Republican holdouts who could potentially derail the plan.
“There are still a few folks who don’t like it,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) to “Fox & Friends” on Sunday. “Democrats desperately want to turn the lights off to stop Elon and DOGE because they know the American people are now getting a glimpse under the hood.”
In the past, Roy had been one of the frequent hardliners who would buck GOP leadership on short-term government funding patches, also known as continuing resolutions, or CRs.
The untenuous situation had forced the GOP leadership to repeatedly have to sway enough Dems to its side to get the stop-gap measures passed in the past two years.
But this time, Roy is onboard amid fears that the Democrats will attempt to leverage GOP infighting to extract significant concessions.
Republicans currently have 218 House seats to the Democrats’ 214, meaning the GOPers can only afford to lose one vote if all lawmakers are present. If they lose two votes to the Dems, it would be a tie without an outcome.
President Trump has thrown his full weight behind the GOP plan to avert a shutdown. So far, it’s not clear how many holdouts there are.
Thus far, the most vocal critic to the proposal is Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a hardline fiscal hawk who struts around the Capitol with a US national debt clock on his lapel.
But many other traditional hardliners seem surprisingly amenable to the plan. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), for instance, has signaled support. A source previously told The Post that Spartz was the last major holdout during the difficult vote on the Trump agenda package blueprint last month.
Massie was the sole vote opposed to the blueprint, and one more Republican vote against would’ve tanked it.
Keen on averting a situation where GOP leadership is forced to make significant concessions to Democrats to forestall a shutdown, hardliners have been coming around.
Helping hardliners is the 99-page CR, mostly keeping government spending largely static.
A GOP leadership aide told reporters that non-defense discretionary spending levels will dip $13 billion below the prior year under the plan.
Defense spending also gets a $6 billion boost and Immigration and Customs Enforcement receives close to a $10 billion boost relative to fiscal year 2024 under the plan.
“Now we have the chance to freeze spending at current levels. No omnibus, no great big bloated bill,” Roy said. “It’s a new world, a new dynamic, and I think we can work with the president to do this while Democrats want to shut down.”
Leadership has argued that the CR is needed to give Congress and the Trump administration time to codify the DOGE cuts during the fiscal year 2026 appropriations process, which has a deadline of Oct. 1.
“The goal here is to start spending less money,” another senior Republican aide told reporters.
Every new fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, Congress is tasked with funding the federal government through 12 appropriations bills, usually staked into an omnibus bill.
This year, Congress has neglected to pass the 12 bills and instead relied on CRs, which effectively put government funding on autopilot. Should this latest CR pass, the Congress will have gone a full year without funding the government in the traditional way.
Democrats had most recently helped Republicans fund a CR in December during a turbulent process. They were peeved by the GOP withdrawing a prior deal amid pressure from tech baron Elon Musk, but ultimaltey the two sides came to an agreement on a watered-down CR.
“Republicans have decided to introduce a partisan continuing resolution that threatens to cut funding for healthcare, nutritional assistance and veterans benefits through the end of the current fiscal year,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) told colleagues in a letter last week.
“That is not acceptable.”
The first step in advancing the CR will be in the House Rules Committee on Monday, a GOP aide said.
After Congress addresses the government shutdown issue, Republicans will resume focus on crafting Trump’s marquee legislative agenda package to slash taxes, beef up border security, rev up energy supplies and bolster national defense.
That endeavor is expected to dovetail with additional belt-tighening measures in the federal budget. Congress will also have to grapple with the debt ceiling, which is projected to become an issue in June.
Additional reporting by Josh Christenson
