Mar 10, 2025
By Jennifer Shutt – States Newsroom D.C. Bureau
WASHINGTON D.C. — Republicans in Congress will try to pass a stopgap spending bill this week to avert a partial government shutdown and keep the government running through September, though they’ll need Democrats’ help to do it.
The 99-page stopgap spending bill, which House Republicans released over the weekend, is required since lawmakers haven’t made any progress conferencing the dozen annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law by Oct. 1.
The continuing resolution, the third since October, would fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2025 — marking the first time since fiscal 2013 that Congress has leaned on stopgap spending bills for the entire year, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., appears confident he’ll be able to pass the bill in the House as soon as Tuesday, though he’ll need nearly every one of the chamber’s 218 GOP lawmakers to support passage, if it’s going to make it to the Senate. At least one is already resistant.
If Republicans fail to approve the bill in the House, that would likely lead Johnson to sit down and negotiate a bipartisan agreement with Democrats, something he’s not been inclined to do so far.
Meandering into a shutdown
The other option would be letting the federal government meander into a partial government shutdown.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., wrote in a statement that the “continuing resolution ensures the government remains open and working for Americans.”
“Democrats have a choice to join us or display their true intentions. Should they choose to vote to shut the government for negotiation leverage and their contempt of President Trump, they are readying to hurt hundreds of millions more,” Cole wrote. “It’s a battle they lost in November, and one the people will continue to see through. Our good-faith efforts provide an immediate solution to the deadline before us.”
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie isn’t so supportive.
“Unless I get a lobotomy Monday that causes me to forget what I’ve witnessed the past 12 years, I’ll be a NO on the CR this week,” Massie posted on social media. “It amazes me that my colleagues and many of the public fall for the lie that we will fight another day.”
In another post, Massie criticized GOP leadership for kicking the can down the road again, instead of negotiating the dozen full-year appropriations bills.
“The argument for CR in September 2024 was to fight in December 2024 after the election. The argument for CR in December 2024 was to fight in March 2025 after the inauguration,” Massie wrote. “The argument for CR in March 2025 is to fight in September 2025 because… we’re not ready yet ?!?!”
‘Hand a blank check to Elon Musk’
House Democrats don’t appear inclined to help Republicans approve the stopgap spending bill in that chamber, saying it’s not a typical continuing resolution and that it represents “a power grab for the White House.”
“Elon Musk and President Trump are stealing from the middle class, seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses, and farms to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations,” House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., wrote in a statement.
“They have made it harder for Americans to get their Social Security benefits; shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has saved American families $21 billion; fired 6,000 veterans and reportedly plan to make it harder for veterans to access benefits by firing an additional 80,000 VA employees; laid off hundreds of workers who build and maintain critical nuclear weapons; and shut down medical research labs. House Republicans’ response: hand a blank check to Elon Musk,” DeLauro added.
Eight Senate Democrats
House passage is just the first, and easiest hurdle, for the continuing resolution.
The bill must garner the support of at least eight Democrats in the Senate, a number that could very well increase in the days ahead if other Republican senators in that chamber come out against passage.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul so far is the sole member of his party in the upper chamber to say he’ll vote against the stopgap spending bill.
“Despite @DOGE’s findings of loony left-wing USAID programs, the Republican spending bill continues to fund the very foreign aid @elonmusk proposes to cut!” Paul wrote on social media. “The bill continues spending at the inflated pandemic levels and will add $2T to the debt this year. Count me as a hell no!”
Paul wrote in a separate post that he wasn’t entirely sure if the administration could unilaterally cancel spending that Congress had approved, a debate that’s working its way through the court system and is likely to wind up at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Rubio canceling woke grants is great but a legal question remains — can the administration simply not spend $ Congress gave to them?” Paul wrote, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “SCOTUS will ultimately decide but last week they initially upheld a lower court decision that is demanding $ be spent.
“The best way to incorporate @DOGE cuts into overspending is for Congress to appropriate less $. Unfortunately, this week Congress will agree to continue spending at Biden levels — ugh.”
Senators from states Trump won
Bills in the Senate must get the support of at least 60 lawmakers to move past procedural votes and onto a simple majority final passage vote. Republicans hold 53 seats at the moment, making bipartisanship crucial for the vast majority of bills.
Senate Democrats include 10 members who represent a state President Donald Trump won during the November elections, a bloc that could see some of those lawmakers vote for the stopgap spending bill — Arizona’s Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Michigan’s Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin. But that’s far from a guarantee.
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