House Republicans to take up government funding extension, defer debt limit vote until next year

House Republicans, with input from President-elect Donald Trump and his team, have agreed to move a temporary government funding extension and wait until early next year to tackle the debt limit.

The play call on Friday is a reversal of what Mr. Trump had demanded — that Republicans extend or eliminate the debt limit as part of any funding deal — but will avoid a lengthy government shutdown fight. Funding is set to lapse at the end of the day without congressional action.

The government may still partially shut down for a brief period this weekend as Congress works to pass the new stopgap bill that would extend current government funding levels through March 14 and includes $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, is bringing the bill to the House floor under suspension of the rules, which means he will need to get at least two-thirds of the House to buy into the plan to pass it and avert a partial government shutdown at midnight.

Even if the House passes the bill on Friday, it may take until at least Saturday to move it through the Senate. But typically a weekend lapse in government funding has limited impact, and a shutdown would only be felt if it lasted into Monday.

“We will not have a government shutdown and we will meet our obligations for our farmers, for the disaster victims all over the country and for making sure that military and essential services and everyone who relies upon the federal government for a paycheck is paid over the holidays,” Mr. Johnson said after leaving a meeting where he discussed the latest plan with his conference.

GOP leaders had presented their members with two options: splitting the government funding extension, disaster aid and economic assistance for farmers into three bills with separate votes under normal rules allowing a simple majority vote, or combining them into a single measure and bringing it up under suspension of the rules, requiring two-thirds support. 

While Republicans settled on the latter approach, they still had to get sign off from Democrats whose votes will be needed to clear the higher threshold. 

“When they make a decision and we see the legislative text, we’ll be in a position to brief our caucus and figure out where we are on it,” Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California told The Washington Times.  

Elon Musk, the billionaire government efficiency advisor to Mr. Trump, questioned why Republicans decided against the option to split the bills up into separate votes that only require a simple majority to pass.

“So is this a Republican bill or a Democrat bill?” he wrote on X, the social media platform he owns. 

Mr. Johnson spent Friday morning negotiating primarily with Republicans as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, told his caucus that he and the speaker had reopened lines of communication after the GOP pulled the plug on a bipartisan deal that all four congressional leaders agreed to earlier in the week.

Democratic lawmakers have said they want Mr. Johnson to go back to their original, bipartisan deal, which Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk scuttled. 

Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said it will be important for Democrats to hear from Mr. Jeffries that he is comfortable with the new plan before they agree to vote for it, given the Republican backtracking.  

“I’m not going to take their word for anything. I don’t trust them. They lie,” he said of the GOP. “I mean, they break their word all the time.”

House Republicans dared the minority party to vote against their latest offering after all but two Democrats teamed up with 38 Republicans to kill Thursday’s version that included a two-year extension of the debt limit.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, Montana Republican, said there was nothing in the funding extension that Democrats “really object about,” and believed their previous opposition was likely a political issue over Mr. Trump’s debt limit demand. 

“Maybe some of the Democrats aren’t gonna like the farm bill. Maybe some of them, very few of them won’t like the emergency assistance bill,” he said.  “And in the context itself, remember a continuing resolution more or less keeps the same stuff rolling, so it doesn’t make any big changes.”

Mr. Trump, according to multiple lawmakers, agreed to drop the debt limit provisions given the lack of support for passing that now.

But in exchange, House Republicans have committed to a plan to raise the debt limit and cut spending early next year through the budget reconciliation process. That procedure will allow them to skirt a Senate filibuster, meaning the legislation could pass through both chambers without any Democratic support if Republicans unite around it.

Members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus opposed adding the debt limit to the government funding extension without any spending cuts, but Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison told The Washington Times that the latest plan was a “big win for fiscal conservatives.” 

“I think it’s pretty a big deal because of the fact that you’ve got fiscal conservatives and people who may be not so fiscally conservative agreeing almost unanimously,” said Mr. Burlison, Missouri Republican. “I don’t know that there was anyone that voiced an objection to it. That’s the big win, and that’s what Trump is asking for.”

Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, another Freedom Caucus member, told The Times that Mr. Trump agreed to the plan to defer action on the debt limit to next year’s reconciliation process after seeing through Thursday’s failed vote that there was not enough support to address it now and without spending reforms. 

GOP leaders presented a proposal in the conference meeting for how to tackle the debt limit next year that would involve a $1.5 trillion increase in the statutory borrowing limit, followed by $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending cuts, according to multiple members present.

The exact mechanics will still need to be negotiated, but the idea is that the $1.5 trillion debt limit increase would be included in a border security-focused reconciliation bill that would move early in the year, along with a “down payment” on spending cuts, according to Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican. Then a second reconciliation bill would follow later in the year with more spending cuts to get to the $2.5 trillion target. 

Mr. Massie said the “I.O.U.” approach may cause some discomfort and that the numbers could still change as the reconciliation negotiations move forward, but that Republicans in the conference meeting signed off on the general concept. 

“I think everybody in the conference agrees broadly that they would vote for a debt limit increase if they got spending reforms,” he said. “As to the specific number there was some grumblings from both sides of the conference about those numbers and where it would come from and all that. But I think the agreement they have now is enough to give the president, and it’s much preferable than raising the debt limit right now.”