The House narrowly passed a bill to fund the government for six months through the end of the fiscal year.
Lawmakers voted 217-213 for the bill. Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) was the lone Democratic vote for it; Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was the only Republican against it.
The vote was a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who was able to secure passage despite his party’s slim majority. Congress has a Friday evening deadline or the federal government will shut down.
The bill will now go to the Senate, where Republicans need 60 votes to pass. They likely will need to convince eight Democrats to vote for it. That may be a tall order, but Democratic leaders were hesitant to say whether they would urge members to vote against it.
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Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative from the District of Columbia, said that the spending bill was an “act of fiscal sabotage” against the city. She said that bill would put D.C. funding at fiscal 2024 levels, forcing the city to slash more than $1 billion even though the city-approved budget has been in place for the past six months.
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The legislation, Democrats warned, was just a prelude to deeper cuts, including to popular safety net programs.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said that there were a “lot of fireworks around this bill.” He dismissed Democrats concerns over spending cuts as overblown, suggesting that a fund to help victims of toxic burn pits could be renewed in next year’s spending.
But he also rejected Democrats’ calls to limit the work of Elon Musk, as he and his Department of Government Efficiency slash federal agencies and make mass layoffs of workers. Although Congress has the power of the purse, he suggested that stopping DOGE would be subverting executive authority.
“Whatever your problem is, whatever your concern is, it is going to be worse in a government shutdown,” Cole said.
