The US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved legislation to prevent a government shutdown through the midterms, as both parties opted to defuse a volatile dispute ahead of the November elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. A continuing resolution (CR) authorizing government spending until 11 December passed the House by a 370-48 vote, with only 19 Republicans and 29 Democrats in opposition. Had it not passed, lawmakers would have had until the end of September to approve new funding or face a government shutdown.
The measure, which keeps federal spending at their current levels until the CR expires, now heads to Trump’s desk, after the Senate approved it last month by an overwhelming margin. In July, the House passed its own CR that would have authorized government spending until 4 December, but most Democrats rejected it for funding immigration enforcement agencies without including new guardrails on their conduct that they had demanded, and the Senate never took it up. The relatively uneventful end to the annual government funding debate comes as lawmakers step up their campaigning ahead of the 3 November elections, in which most forecasters believe Democratic candidates have an edge in retaking the majority in the House of Representatives.
There are mounting signs that the minority may also be able to regain control of the Senate by winning seats in at least three states that voted for Trump two years ago, as the president struggles with approval ratings driven lower by persistent inflation and the war with Iran. In the run-up to the vote, top House Democrats said they were ready to support the Senate measure, noting it included policy tweaks that the party supported. Among those was a delay until 11 December on a new rule by the White House office of management and budget that Democrats feared would allow the Trump administration to cancel grants at any time for any reason.
After losing control of both houses of Congress in the 2024 elections, Democrats repeatedly used the Senate’s filibuster to force the government closed and push the Republican majority into compromising over their preferred policies. Last year, Senate Democrats instigated a government shutdown by refusing to vote for any spending bill that did not extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans. That led to the longest funding lapse in US history, but ultimately no agreement to keep the cost offsets going after the shutdown ended 43 days later.
Some government agencies shut down again briefly earlier this year after Democrats held up a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in protest of the killings by federal agents of two US citizens in Minneapolis during an intensive immigration enforcement drive. While an agreement was reached to resolve that blockade, the two parties did not agree on funding the DHS for weeks, as Democrats held out for reforms to immigration enforcement operations. A bipartisan agreement was reached to fund the department operations exclusive of the agencies involved in Trump’s mass deportation push, then Republicans passed a party-line bill that allocated funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for the duration of Trump’s presidency, with no reforms to immigration enforcement.
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