Washington — The House approved a temporary extension of government funding in a bipartisan vote on Thursday, as lawmakers work to push off another deadline to avert a government shutdown.
The House passed a continuing resolution in a bipartisan vote of 320 to 99 on Thursday afternoon.
The short-term extension would fund some government agencies for another week, through March 8, and the remaining agencies until March 22. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate could vote as soon as Thursday night.
“That will require all of us working together,” the New York Democrat said. “There’s certainly no reason this should take a very long time. So let’s cooperate and get it done quickly.”
Congressional leaders announced the deal Wednesday evening, saying they “are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government.”
The agreement tees up a vote on six of the 12 annual spending bills before the end of next week. The leaders said the one-week extension was necessary to allow the appropriations committees “adequate time to execute on this deal in principle” and give lawmakers time to review the package’s text.
Lawmakers would then have two more weeks to pass the other six spending bills to fully fund the government until September.
The government has repeatedly been on the brink of a shutdown since the end of last September. Unable to pass the annual appropriations bills before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, Congress has relied on short-term extensions, known as continuing resolutions, to keep the government operating.
If Congress does not approve the latest extension before Saturday, funding for transportation, housing, agriculture and veterans programs will run out. Funding for other agencies, including the Pentagon, lapses on March 8.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, proposed the latest plan after an “intense” meeting at the White House on Tuesday with the president, vice president and other congressional leaders. Lawmakers left the meeting optimistic about averting a shutdown before the deadline at the end of this week.
The new deadlines raise the pressure on the House to pass spending legislation amid Republican divisions. Negotiations over spending have been prolonged by House conservatives demanding steep cuts and policy changes while refusing to support any bipartisan legislation.
Johnson, overseeing a narrow House majority, has therefore had to rely on Democrats to pass the continuing resolutions that have funded the government in recent months, a dynamic that continued in Thursday’s vote.
House Freedom Caucus chairman Bob Good, a Virginia Republican, appeared disappointed in the deal, telling reporters Wednesday night that he hoped Johnson wouldn’t bring it up for a vote if a majority of Republicans didn’t support it. A majority of the GOP caucus ended up voting for the bill.
“It seems right now what we’re doing is, we’re doing what the Democrats want to do, so that it will pass the Senate and be signed by the White House,” Good said, noting that he would not vote for it.
A number of other conservative Republicans also said it would not get their vote.
“The question is, next week what do you do? Will a majority of Republicans vote for the first installment of the omnibus, I certainly hope not,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said Thursday.
Massie said Congress should move on from this year’s spending fight by passing a one-year continuing resolution to fund the government through September. He wants lawmakers to shift their focus to approving next year’s appropriations bills “and get that one right.”
“We’re seven months away from the next deadline,” Massie said. “We’ve gone so far into this. We’re five months into this.”
The White House said Wednesday it was on board with the new tranche of funding, saying it “would help prevent a needless shutdown while providing more time to work on bipartisan appropriations bills and for the House to pass the bipartisan national security supplemental as quickly as possible.”
Jaala Brown contributed reporting.