House Passes CR, Sends Measure to Senate
WASHINGTON — After days of unrest in the Republican conference, the House on Friday passed a short-term funding bill, dramatically averting a pre-Christmas government shutdown just six hours before it was set to begin.
The vote on “Plan C” of the American Relief Act of 2025 was 366-34, with all 34 no votes coming from Republicans.
One Democrat, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, voted “present.”
After the vote, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, R-N.Y., took something of a victory lap, claiming House Democrats had successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans from “shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working-class Americans all across the land.”
“House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling,” he said.
The funding measure, dramatically trimmed from the 1,547-page agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., struck with House Democrats earlier this week, will keep federal agencies open until March 15.
The measure includes $100 billion in disaster aid for states impacted by natural disasters including recent hurricanes in the Southeast.
It also extends the 2018 Farm Bill for one year and includes $10 billion in aid for farmers and ranchers.
The measure was taken up under suspension, meaning it needed a two-thirds majority to pass. It was also taken up whole, rather than as three different bills, as Johnson had envisioned earlier in the day.
Before the vote, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, gave an impassioned speech accusing Republicans of caving in to an “unelected President Elon Musk.”
“We should immediately return to consideration of the bipartisan, bicameral deal we agreed to earlier this week and reject the oligarchy that wants to usurp the authority of the House of Representatives,” DeLauro said.
Despite her pleas, she and almost every other Democrat supported the continuing resolution, sending it over to the Senate, which is expected to advance it quickly and send it to the White House for President Joe Biden’s signature by midnight.
Even if the Senate doesn’t quite make that deadline, the shutdown won’t go into effect as long as they’re still talking and likely to pass the measure in the early morning hours of Saturday.
Making the spending extension a bit more palatable to Democrats was the fact it did not include a suspension of the debt limit, a proposal Trump had demanded be part of any package House Republicans proposed.
Trump, and allies like the aforementioned Musk, had said the suspension was critical to advancing the incoming administration’s “America-First” agenda.
Johnson had included a two-year suspension in the debt ceiling that the House failed to pass on Thursday, but finally was forced to let it go due to unwavering opposition by the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
The speaker now hopes to deal with the debt limit as part of a future budget reconciliation bill.
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue
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