House Speaker Mike Johnson unveils new strategy to avoid government shutdown as deadline approaches

Washington — As the month-end deadline to avoid a government shutdown approaches, House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday unveiled the latest temporary government funding plan after congressional leaders reached agreement on a short-term spending deal following the House decision. rejection from Johnson’s kick-off last week.

“As we fall just short of the finish line, an alternative plan is now necessary,” Johnson said in a letter to colleagues announcing the new plan on Sunday.

Last week, Johnson advance with a vote on a six-month resolution to keep the government funded, which was coupled with a controversial noncitizen voting measure that Democrats considered a failure. And with opposition from a small group of House Republicans, within the slim Republican majority, the measure failed to gain the support needed to pass.

On Sunday, Johnson said the House would now proceed to a vote on a three-month stopgap measure to keep the government funded without the associated ballot measure, setting up a pre-holiday funding fight that has become typical for Congress.

Johnson said he made the decision Sunday to prevent the Senate from “cluttering us with a bill loaded with billions of dollars in new spending and unrelated provisions,” saying the three-month extension is “the only option left.”

After the House Speaker’s plan failed last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared a bill for a Senate vote in case the House fails to reach a solution. Johnson said that unlike a Senate bill, the House legislation “will be a very narrow, minimalist resolution (extension) that includes only those extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

The legislation announced Sunday includes about $230 million in additional funding for the Secret Service, which comes after an apparent second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Lawmakers have been weighing how to handle the funding after the Secret Service said its resources were stretched stretched thin by heightened levels of protection following the first assassination attempt on Trump.

For many House conservatives, who typically oppose continuing the resolutions, the new plan represents a situation they had hoped to avoid. Johnson acknowledged that would be a disappointment to some, but he insisted that “this is the most prudent course to take in the current circumstances.”

With such a narrow majority in the lower chamber, Johnson had few options after failing to rally House Republicans around the initial funding bill, necessitating cross-party work to avoid a government shutdown. A suggestion from Trump that Republicans should shut down the government if they couldn’t get the noncitizen ballot measure approved further complicated matters for Johnson. But on Friday, the the speaker reported that he expected Trump to soften his calls for a shutdown.

“As history has taught and current polls confirm, shutting down the government less than 40 days before a fateful election would be an act of political malfeasance,” Johnson wrote in a letter to his colleagues.

Schumer criticized Johnson in a statement Sunday, accusing the House speaker of wasting “precious time” in reaching an agreement on how to fund the government, though he praised the bipartisan negotiations he said took place over the past four days.

“I am pleased that bipartisan negotiations quickly produced a government funding deal free of cuts and poison pills, but this same deal could have been reached two weeks ago,” Schumer said. “The government will run out of funding in just over a week from today. Time is running out, and I hope House Speaker Johnson and the Republicans will not waste any more time.”

The New York Democrat said he hoped both chambers could approve the extension resolution this week. Congress has until Oct. 1 to fund the government.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that House Democrats will “evaluate the spending legislation in its entirety before its consideration by the House” when they return to Washington this week.

“Congress is now on a bipartisan path to avoid a government shutdown that would harm ordinary Americans,” Jeffries said.

contributed to this report.