House lawmakers are bracing for a possible vote on the 1,500-page government funding deal as early as Wednesday night or Thursday morning under a fast-track process.
The potential move to speed up consideration comes as conservatives are making a series of last-ditch demands and a number of allies of President-elect Trump come out against the legislation.
Conservatives are asking Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for a full 72 hours to review the sprawling legislation, which combines an extension of current government funding levels through March with hundreds of billions of dollars in add-ons, along with votes on a measure to cut nondefense spending and an amendment that would halt the sale of border wall materials.
But conservatives on the House Rules Committee who are pushing for those votes are signaling that their requests are not being fulfilled.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the panel, told The Hill that the bill will not go through the committee. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), another member of the group, said shortly after noon on Tuesday that there is no indication that the bill will move through the Rules Committee.
If the bill does not go through the Rules Committee, it would need to come to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process, which bypasses procedural hurdles but requires two-thirds of the House for passage, a prospect that some say is increasingly likely.
“If this bill moves, it is almost certainly moving by suspension and is moving today or tomorrow morning,” Roy said.
The scramble to usher the continuing resolution (CR) and other policy and spending items through Congress comes as Washington faces a Friday deadline to avoid a government shutdown — and as Democrats hope to squeeze as much as they can out of divided government before Republicans assume control of Congress and the White House next year.
As more time passes, however, more Republicans are coming out against the bill. The latest critic was Donald Trump Jr., who joined Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy — two top Trump allies — in strongly criticizing the funding bill.
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote on the social platform X, which he owns.
Congressional negotiators unveiled the sprawling continuing resolution on Tuesday evening, which would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill for one year and appropriate roughly $100 billion in disaster relief and $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, among other authorizations.
House Republicans of all stripes had slammed the legislation even before leadership formally unveiled the measure, criticizing the additional policy priorities included, wins secured by Democrats and the last-minute nature of its rollout.
Such opposition raised questions about whether the legislation could clear a normally party-line procedural rule vote in the House. Conservatives, emboldened by the razor-thin majority in the House, have often used the vote to block the legislation as a form of protest.
The rule would first have to be reported out of committee, where three hard-line conservatives sit and could block it, then pass on the floor, where a majority vote is needed.
Still, Johnson signaled Tuesday that he would like to see the legislation go through the normal process in the House Rules Committee and respect the rule to allow 72 hours from release of legislative text to a vote on the House floor — though he left the door open to potentially speeding up the process.
“We’re gonna try to honor the 72-hour rule, although I am being lobbied heavily from people on both sides of the aisle to not do that,” Johnson said. “I’m trying to honor the rule. We’ll see what we can manage here.”
Hard-line conservatives, mainly those in the House Freedom Caucus, asked Johnson for a number of conditions in order to move the underlying bill to a final vote through a regular process: “A full 72 hours to read the bill,” “a vote on the DOGE Act to cut non-defense spending 13% to pre-COVID 2019 levels,” and “an amendment to stop Biden’s ongoing fire sale of border wall construction materials,” the Freedom Caucus posted on X.
But there is no indication that those requests are being seriously considered. Members are eager to depart Washington for the holiday break, despite the discontent with the spending package. The House also needs to allow time for the Senate to consider the bill.
Even before leadership was eyeing the procedural fast-tracks, House Republicans of all stripes had slammed the legislation, criticizing the additional policy priorities included, wins secured by Democrats and the last-minute nature of its roll out.
“It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), a Freedom Caucus member. “This is what Washington, D.C., has done. This is why I ran for Congress, to try to stop this. And sadly, this is happening again.”
