White House blesses plan to pass partial federal funding stopgap

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(The Center Square) – Exactly three weeks until the federal government runs out of funds, top Democrats and Republicans finally appear united on a general course of action to avert a shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Tuesday that House Appropriations subcommittees are determined to advance to the floor all 12 appropriations bills providing updated annual funding for federal agencies.

The impending Sept. 30 deadline makes it virtually impossible that all the bills will pass both chambers of Congress on time. But Johnson is confident that House Democrats and Republicans can come together and pass the three which have made it through the Senate already, then set the rest of federal funding on cruise control until November by passing a Continuing Resolution, or CR.

“If Democrats are willing to work with us, we have our sleeves rolled up and we want to do this in good faith. We just have to think responsibly how to spend less money than we did last year,” Johnson said. “And if they’re willing to do that – and it’s incumbent upon all of us to do it with the high national debt – we’re open to that.”

So far, not a single fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill has passed both the House and Senate. Both chambers must ultimately approve the same text.

Three partisan funding bills have passed the House, while a bipartisan three-bill minibus passed the Senate right before lawmakers recessed in August. The minibus includes the MilCon-VA, Agriculture, and Legislative Branch funding bills, which Johnson and others intend to conference over and hopefully pass by Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2025.

“What we’re really advocating for is an actual old-school conference, the way this is supposed to work between the House and Senate,” Johnson said. “The subcommittee chairs of each of those subcommittees that deal with those three individual bills would be represented, as would all the members of each of those subcommittees in Appropriations. 

“You’d have a cross-section of everybody there, a good representation of the country, a good and I think vigorous debate between the House and Senate, and that is how the process is supposed to work.”

The White House endorsed the minibus-CR option Tuesday afternoon. The question remains whether lawmakers will actually work together, with both sides having called for bipartisanship but also preemptively pinning blame on the other if a shutdown happens.

“The ultimate question of whether there’s going to be a government shutdown at the end of the month is going to be up to congressional Democrats, and that’s just the way it is,” Johnson said Tuesday, urging Democrats to abandon their current “path of maximum resistance.”

Fiscal watchdog organizations, however, are condemning lawmakers’ inability to properly fund the entire federal government on an annual basis. Taking the minibus-CR route will mark the fourth time in a row that Congress punted on passing all 12 appropriations bills, given that lawmakers never passed a fiscal year 2025 budget, instead passing three consecutive CRs.

“Every time lawmakers play chicken with budget deadlines, it risks a wasteful shutdown of the federal government,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, stated Tuesday. “It is a total waste of time and resources and antithetical to the efficiency message that this Administration took office touting.”

MacGuineas also urged Congress to reduce spending levels in the appropriations bills they do pass, echoing Johnson’s goals.

“In light of our massive debt, [lawmakers] should reduce both defense and non-defense spending levels below their current levels and extend the expiring discretionary spending caps to enforce additional deficit reduction,” she said. “It’s time for lawmakers to stop adding to the debt, abandon dishonest budget gimmicks, and commit to fixing the broken budget process while putting our debt on a more sustainable path.”