For all the latest developments in Congress, follow WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller at Today on the Hill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing his biggest test yet — getting his unwieldy Republican conference to unify behind a short-term spending plan to avoid a government shutdown.
If the House and Senate fail to approve legislation before Friday, Nov. 17 at midnight, Americans will awaken next Saturday to a shuttered federal government.
Even though the deadline is a week away, it’s far from clear what the exact path toward keeping the government open will be.
Johnson initially suggested the possibility of passing a short-term spending bill that would keep the government funded through mid-January.
But many GOP conservatives don’t like stopgap measures that maintain existing spending levels.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., has instead proposed a “laddered” continuing resolution, which has gained traction with Johnson.
“There’s nothing magical or mysterious about it,” Johnson said this week. “It would just be effectively two phases. You would do one part, a subset of the bills, by a December date and the rest of it by a January date.”
Republicans who favor the unique approach believe it could help them get leverage to negotiate spending levels with the Senate, which often passes a “clean” continuing resolution, to buy time to address various issues.
But Democrats strongly oppose the laddered approach, arguing it will only create confusion, more deadlines and the greater possibility that the government will shut down.
“House Democrats are not asking for our policy preferences,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. “We’re asking for the status quo, to keep the government open.”
For Jeffries, the status quo is sticking to spending agreements that date back to the debt ceiling talks with the White House.
But Republican conservatives have chafed at current spending levels, repeatedly making efforts to deepen spending cuts.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said on the “X” platform Friday that “a vote for a ‘CR’ without any true ‘wins’ is a vote for (among other bad things) the status quo and more deficit spending.”
Johnson’s predecessor, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was ousted by GOP conservatives because he was willing to allow Democrats to help pass a short-term spending bill that averted a shutdown at the start of October.
But if House Republicans are to pass anything without Democrats’ assistance, Johnson remains in the same position that faced McCarthy.
He can’t afford to lose more than a handful of GOP votes and his conference has been highly unpredictable. Its members allowed the House to be shut down for more than three weeks, because they couldn’t agree on a new speaker. until finally settling on Johnson.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t have any faith that Republicans will pass a bill that can get approval in the Senate.
So he took a procedural step that would allow the Senate to begin work on a continuing resolution to avoid a shutdown.
“The only way we avoid a shutdown is with bipartisan cooperation,” Schumer said. “Just as it was true in September, it will be true in the future. I implore Speaker Johnson and our House Republican colleagues to learn from the fiasco of a month ago.”
Schumer said that efforts by “hard right” conservatives to include “slashing cuts” that have no support from Democrats “will only make a shutdown more likely.”
The federal government is once again beginning preparations, in the event of a shutdown, which could cause interruptions in pay for about two million federal workers.
The pay of military personnel could also be delayed if a shutdown occurs, though backpay is guaranteed once it ends.
