Washington has a plan to fund the government but faces a gauntlet of procedural steps in the hours ahead before it can avert a shutdown at midnight on Friday.
Congressional leaders released their 1,012 page spending bill on Thursday, covering an estimated 70% of discretionary government spending.
It aims to fully fund the government through the end of September and be the final step in a drawn-out fight that has seen a government funding debate stretch almost six months into the fiscal year.
But first the bill must pass the House of Representatives, where far-right opposition to the pact remains fierce. Then it will be the Senate’s turn, and procedural delays could hold things up further there.
After that, observers hope, it will make its way to President Joe Biden’s desk before a partial government shutdown is scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. ET on Saturday. Biden has already promised to sign the bill as soon as he can, with a formal statement of administration policy released Thursday urging swift passage.
“I imagine some folks here in the Capitol are past the point of exhaustion,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer noted Thursday on the Senate floor.
At the same time, House Speaker Mike Johnson has acknowledged that this most recent stretch, notably the tense talks over the Department of Homeland Security and the border, “was the most difficult to negotiate.”
The House is up first with a vote that will require a two-thirds majority and is currently scheduled to take place soon after 11 a.m. ET following a formal debate. The Senate is set to follow in the hours afterwards, if it passes.
A factor likely to increase the desire across Capitol Hill for quick action is that once today’s business is done, both chambers of Congress are set to break for a two-week recess.
A focus on the border
But before lawmakers can head home, they have a big task ahead. Funding for a wide array of areas from the Pentagon, the IRS, and even the White House and legislative branch will expire at midnight without action.
The tight deadlines are a result of last-minute delays over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the border. Other areas of negotiation have been largely hanging in limbo for this last puzzle piece.
After calls from some Republicans to use the budget process to “dismantle” Biden’s border policies, the final product is notably less dramatic but with some changes at the border set to be implemented. There are new resources for the US Border Patrol as well as additional detention beds run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other provisions.
Other highlights of the massive bill include a cutting-off of US government assistance to UNRWA, the main UN agency that provides assistance to Palestinians, amid accusations that a number of their employees participated in the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel.
The bill also lays out increases for Democratic priorities like federal child care and funding for cancer and Alzheimer’s research.
Provision for other wings of the government — including the agriculture, commerce, and transportation departments — were already agreed to and enacted in another deal that passed earlier this month.
Opposition from the right
The bill is expected to pass by large margins, but there are plenty of questions still outstanding about how bumpy a ride it will have in both chambers.
In the House, the steep two-thirds threshold required to pass the bill under a procedure known as the suspension of the rules has left leadership scrambling, especially on the Republican side of the aisle. Questions about the final tally come after the influential House Freedom Caucus came out in opposition, calling the bill “a massive spending bill drafted in secrecy and dropped on us in the middle of the night.”
Over in the Senate, an array of conservatives from Rand Paul of Kentucky to Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also quickly announced their opposition.
What remains unclear is whether any of them plan to use procedural tactics to delay a final vote. Any Senator — including Democrats unhappy on other issues like a lack of funding for Ukraine — could singlehandedly express their displeasure and object to a time-limit agreement. That would push a final vote into the weekend and past the midnight deadline.
In any case, even if a partial shutdown takes effect Saturday, Congressional leadership is likely to be able to muscle the bill into law. That would be well before any notable economic effects would be felt when the workweek begins again on Monday.
But another round of shutdown brinkmanship, whether or not tonight’s midnight deadline is breached, could nevertheless be viewed as yet another strike against the government in the eyes of credit ratings agencies.
S&P made a call in 2011 to downgrade the US credit rating. Last August, Fitch followed up with a downgrade of its own and cited government dysfunction as a key reason for doing so.
Moody’s made its own move in November, turning negative on the US. It stopped short of a downgrade but kept the option open in the future.
Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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