New Funding Agreement Reached, House Vote Set for Thursday

WASHINGTON—An agreement backed by President-elect Donald Trump to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the week has been reached and a vote is set for the night of Dec. 19, The Epoch Times has learned.

It is a pared-down 116-page funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), as an earlier proposal seemed poised to fail.

In addition to extending the deadline for government funding through March 14, 2025, the legislation wraps in a handful of other bills included in the original, abandoned funding plan. That includes around $30.1 billion for emergency hurricane relief and a one year extension of the farm bill.

The bill would also suspend the debt ceiling until Jan. 30, 2027—aligning with a demand made by Trump.

That said, the new draft is also likely to face difficulties.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said of the provisions to raise the debt ceiling, “Hard pass.”

Republicans such as Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) have objected to raising the debt ceiling without fiscal reforms, while Democrats have decried House Republicans for walking away from the previous bipartisan agreement.

The new bill replaces an earlier 1,547-page package that resulted from weeks of private negotiations but faced immediate pushback from both House and Senate Republicans after its release on Dec. 17. Members decried what they said was giving up the farm to Democrats with pork-barrel spending.

This initial CR included disaster relief, transferring Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia, and a one-year extension of the farm bill.

The knockout blow was delivered by Trump, however, who issued a statement against the bill along with Vice President-elect JD Vance. The joint statement followed an all-day push on social media platform X by Elon Musk, a close political ally to the incoming president, against the massive funding package.

Trump called for a CR that also raises the debt limit, although the ceiling is not expected to be reached until June 2025, due to a 2023 agreement between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden.

Instead, the 2023 agreement suspended the debt ceiling through Jan. 2, 2025, though the Treasury Department usually finds assets to push the deadline as far away as possible. It pared back COVID-19 and IRS funds, in addition to implementing stricter work requirements for welfare recipients.

The Economic Policy Innovation Center predicted Monday that the government could reach the debt limit “as early as June or at least before August 2025.”

Trump wanted the debt ceiling to be raised through reconciliation, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told The Epoch Times.

The reconciliation possibility would involve a mechanism where legislation related to the national debt, spending, and revenue can pass without being subjected to the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.

There have also been discussions among some House GOP members about raising the debt ceiling through the Limit, Save, Grow Act, which the House passed last year. The bill raised the debt ceiling but implemented significant fiscal reforms, according to Norman.

However, he said, nothing regarding the debt ceiling has been decided by Johnson.

During a Dec. 19 press conference, Jeffries noted that a bipartisan agreement had been reached and the House GOP should honor it.

“That bipartisan agreement has now been detonated because House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt the very working-class Americans that many of them pretend to want to help,” he said.

Jeffries called the debt ceiling talk “premature at best.”

Without Democratic support, it will be nearly impossible for leadership to advance even a clean measure—an extension of government funding without additional policy measures. Such legislation has historically relied on Democrats’ support to pass, as Republicans are split about 50:50.

The funding fight could also determine whether Johnson will remain speaker come next month. The House GOP will have a narrower majority in the 119th Congress, and Johnson can only afford to spare a few Republican defections.

Jeffries said that Democrats would not help Johnson keep the gavel even if he puts forth a CR favorable to Democrats.

Trump has not committed to supporting Johnson as speaker.

“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” he told Fox News Digital.