The House passed Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) continuing resolution 217-213 Tuesday afternoon, bringing Congress one step closer to avoiding a shutdown just days before the government is set to run out of funding.
The legislation advances against the backdrop of the Trump administration and its billionaire advisor Elon Musk continuing to flout congressional spending bills such as this one, lawlessly shutting down agencies and ending funding for federal programs.
House Democrats — as previewed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — were almost entirely united Tuesday, with all but one voting against the President Donald Trump-backed bill; Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) was the sole Democrat to support it.
And despite several House Republicans claiming they were on the fence up until the very last minute, only one member ultimately broke ranks. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) went against the leadership and joined Democrats in opposing the measure, ignoring a steady pressure campaign that saw Trump threaten a primary challenge against him.
“It’s not surprising to me that House Republicans have walked the plank because of their fealty to Donald Trump,” Jeffries said after the vote when asked if he was surprised that Republicans stuck together to pass the CR bill.
“Republicans in this town no longer work for the American people,” he continued. “They’re not even pretending … It should not surprise anyone that House Republicans continue to bend the knee to Donald Trump and their billionaire puppet master Elon Musk.”
The House passage of the seven-month CR comes after weeks of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans. Locked out of power, Democrats have been pushing for a simple guarantee in exchange for their support: They sought from Republicans a promise that Trump and Musk will stop unilaterally blocking congressionally approved funding, and to rein in Musks’ rampage through the federal government. Simply passing the bill, they contended, would signal business as usual.
“It is not a simple stop gap that keeps the lights on, the doors open,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, said on the House floor before today’s vote. “This is Republican leadership handing over the keys to the government and a blank check to Elon Musk, and to President Trump. As the White House has said, this bill creates more flexibility for this administration to continue to undermine the Constitution.”
House Republican leadership dismissed Democrats’ request for assurance that the administration would respect the separation of powers as a “non-starter,” saying they did not feel they can “tie” the President’s “hands” like that.
“They added these completely undeliverable conditions to the negotiation. They want us to tie the hands of the administration,” Johnson told reporters as he walked out of a press conference Tuesday morning, just hours before the CR vote. “They’re just doing that to try to get themselves covered. It’s not going to work. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t pass. And the government would shut down.”
The funding bill will now make its way to the Senate, where lawmakers have less than four days to pass the bill to avoid a government shutdown.
House Democratic leadership told reporters following the CR vote that they would not expect Senate Democrats to support the current text.
“We put up a strong vote in opposition of this bill because this hurts families,” House Democratic Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) told reporters. “I wouldn’t expect senators to vote for this. This is a bad bill. We did not negotiate this bill. They did not negotiate this bill.”
Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) also chimed in, adding that she does not know “why a Democrat would look at this and decide they want to be on that side of the ledger.”
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate; Democrats would need to filibuster the CR to stop it from passing.
The House will be out of session for the rest of this week and next, an undoubtedly calculated move from Johnson and House GOP leadership that puts the Senate under more pressure to accept Johnson’s CR text without changes. Any effort from the Senate to try and amend the bill and send it back to the House will risk a government shutdown, with the lower chamber out of town and the deadline for funding rapidly approaching.
