A day after the House Rules Committee reported a six-month government funding stopgap to the full chamber, the House engaged in further debate on the federal budget proposal from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), which now goes to the Senate after clearing the lower chamber.
H.R. 1968, Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, passed in the House by a vote of 217-213. The Senate faces a looming government shutdown deadline of Friday, March 14.
Rules hearing.
The Republican-drafted continuing resolution, was reported out of committee late Monday evening by a 9-3 vote in a resolution bundled with other legislation concerning COVID-19 pandemic-era fraud and the elimination of IRS rules on decentralized digital asset brokers.
The 99-page CR “helps avoid the government shutting down and allows us to continue our work and service to the American people,” said House Rules Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) to begin Monday’s hearing. “The House must act to avoid a needless shutdown that serves no purpose. By doing so, this body can put its focus and attention on the next appropriations process. Our work must continue.”
Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-MA) took aim at the Trump administration, particularly the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget, for “unilaterally freezing all federal spending” in February.
To McGovern and Democrats broadly, “Republicans have been trying to shut the government down since Trump took over. That’s when Trump gave Elon Musk and DOGE “unprecedented power to sabotage the federal government, letting them hack into agencies and dismiss thousands of critical federal workers.”
Appearing before the Rules Committee as witnesses were House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) and Appropriations Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).
Congressional Republicans have maintained that the CR reduces government spending but is scaled to 2024 appropriated levels. Cole testified that the CR “maintains the status quo” through the last day of fiscal year 2025, September 30, and includes “only legitimate anomalies.” What it does not have, Cole said, is “a single poison-pill rider. It’s a clean CR fully funding our government.”
As explained by Representative Erin Houchin (R-IN), the CR “rescinds $20 billion in funding provided to the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.” This would follow the approximately $20 billion clawed back at the beginning of the year as part of an accelerated agreement struck during the Biden Administration. These further cuts, said Houchin, would go towards spending on other government programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, “as requested by the administration.”
DeLauro called the CR a “blank check” that “creates more flexibility for this administration to steal from the middle class, from seniors, veterans, working people, small businesses and farmers to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.” She urged her colleagues to not “forfeit our authorities over government funding as laid out in the Constitution to an unelected, unchecked billionaire,” referring to Musk.
Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) agreed with DeLauro that the CR is “filled with cuts and policy changes while abandoning Congress’ responsibility to decide how and why to spend taxpayer dollars.”
DeLauro told Scanlon that the CR encourages the Trump administration to “keep impounding,” a phrase she said simply means “stealing the money — taxpayer dollars from our constituents. Taxpayer dollars that have already been appropriated and signed into law by the president of the United States.”
Scanlon in her exchange with DeLauro accused Republicans of excluding Democrats from budget negotiations.
The next day.
On Tuesday, House leaders spoke at an event hosted by Punchbowl News. Speaker Johnson claimed Republicans “empowered the Appropriations Committee” and Chairman Cole to “work with Democrats in a consistent back-and-forth negotiation.” Republicans “were doing that in good faith.”
What prompted Johnson to roll out his CR was Democrats’ “totally unprecedented, totally undeliverable condition” that would “effectively take away the authority of DOGE to find fraud, waste, and abuse.” Johnson added he was “shocked” that Democrats “made that their decision because that’s what drove the train off the rails and forced us into a CR.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in comments made at the Punchbowl event rebutted that DeLauro was engaged in “ongoing bipartisan negotiations” with Cole, “as well as the top Senate appropriators. And those discussions were progressing, and at the 11th hour, President Trump and Mike Johnson cut off the negotiations, ordered Tom Cole to walk away from them, and then introduced a partisan spending bill,” Jeffries said.
Meanwhile, the House debated the CR in the hours leading up to the final vote Tuesday afternoon. Speaking for the majority party, Representative Michelle Fischbach (R-MN) said in her opening statement that the Democrats “are okay with the chaos of a government shutdown” to oppose Trump. She echoed Cole’s description of the CR as a “clean” bill.
McGovern responded on behalf of Democrats that a clean CR would not need to be 99 pages. “A CR is pretty simple,” he said. “The government gets funded at the same levels. Calling this CR clean is laughable.”
Later, Representative Ralph Norman (R-NC) expanded on Cole’s mention of the so-called anomalies in the CR. In total, Norman said, the CR would “increase defense discretionary spending by $6 billion. It cuts nondefense discretionary spending by $13 billion.” In regards to the new clawbacks to IRS funding, the CR “does away” with the “87,000 IRS agents that are going to harass the taxpayers.”
What taxpayers will experience, McGovern said, will be the “the biggest tax increase on middle-class families that we’ve ever seen,” a consequence of “Trump’s tariffs.”
Additional reporting by Maureen Leddy, Checkpoint.
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