House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a stopgap funding bill to tide federal agencies over through the week before Thanksgiving, including an extra $88 million to help provide additional security for officials in all three branches of government and a typical array of “extenders” for programs lapsing Sept. 30.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will now try to muscle the 91-page bill through the House with Republican support this week, with few Democrats if any expected to back the measure. Johnson said Tuesday he is aiming for a vote by Friday, and the House Rules panel scheduled a 2 p.m. meeting on Tuesday to consider the terms of floor debate.
House Rules panel met Tuesday to consider the terms of floor debate, which is expected to hit the floor by Friday.
GOP leaders can’t count on the votes of any Democrats to keep the government operating, given their opposition to a bill they say shortchanges millions of individuals who will lose access to affordable health insurance.
Johnson, already facing a few GOP defections, on Tuesday evening was working to tamp down concerns that the bill’s $30 million in additional funds for members’ security needs wasn’t enough and that the rules for tapping the cash were too restrictive.
“You’ve got leadership who’s got their protective bubble, and we just don’t feel like they’re taking seriously the members, and that’s both parties,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. “[Johnson]’s trying to address it.”
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla, who wasn’t at Johnson’s meeting, said he has heard concerns about the security funding and that there may be a need for more. But he said he hasn’t heard of any members threatening to vote against the continuing resolution because of security funding.
“We don’t have a lot of time to work this out, but we should be able to get there,” Cole said. “So I advise members, ‘vote for this and then we’ll keep working on the problem.’”
The fiscal 2026 Legislative Branch spending bill, which is expected to part of a three-bill appropriations package that’s being negotiated, is another vehicle to deal with the issue.
Related: Republicans propose $30 million in stopgap for lawmaker security
A handful of House Republicans have come out in opposition to the measure for other reasons, though President Donald Trump’s advocacy has traditionally been enough to get many of those members to support similar measures this year.
“Republicans have to stick TOGETHER to fight back against the Radical Left Democrat demands, and vote “YES!” on the stopgap bill, Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social.
Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., Victoria Spartz, R-Ind., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, have all said they would vote “no,” though it’s not clear all of them will follow through when the measure gets to the floor.
Two key members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus came out in support of the measure during Rules’ meeting on the bill: Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
Roy said even though the measure would mostly keep spending flat from current levels, enough cuts were happening through the formal rescissions process to satisfy him, including $9 billion cut in July and nearly $5 billion in additional foreign aid funding that’s been proposed for elimination.
Anomalies and riders
The stopgap bill as introduced includes funding adjustments requested by the White House, including a “D.C. fix” enabling the city to spend more of its own funds and authority for certain agencies to spend at a rate needed to prevent disruptions.
That includes a major new cash infusion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund and enough money up front for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, to maintain current participation levels.
The measure also includes extensions of popular health care and veterans provisions, the customary death gratuity for the beneficiaries of deceased lawmakers, and maintains the current pay freeze for lawmakers and senior executive branch officials including Vice President JD Vance.
It also would extend various national security-related programs, including authorizations to continue monitoring and intercepting potential drone threats at large public events and extend liability protections for businesses that share information with the government on cybersecurity incidents.
And while the House and Senate Agriculture panels negotiate a multiyear reauthorization, the measure would temporarily extend provisions of a century-old grain standards law that if allowed to lapse would disrupt U.S. grain exports and cost the farm economy more than $70 million a day, according to House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa.
Current funding for federal agencies expires after Sept. 30, with a partial government shutdown beginning the next day unless President Donald Trump signs stopgap legislation. Both chambers are scheduled to be in recess next week, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday that his chamber could potentially take the bill up this weekend if the House can send it over in time.
Tough talk from Democrats
Democrats in both chambers are talking tough, however, arguing they had no input into the bill’s drafting and it lacks key provisions extending enhanced subsidies for health insurance coverage on federal and state exchanges that expire after Dec. 31. Johnson called that a “December policy issue, not a September funding issue.”
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., had some critiques with how the bill itself is drafted. She pointed out at the Rules meeting that the WIC “anomaly” falls short of the White House request for an annualized rate of $8.2 billion by roughly $600 million, for example.
Cole responded that the matter will be dealt with as part of a compromise fiscal 2026 Agriculture spending bill, which congressional leaders are trying to work out over the next several weeks as part of a package with the Legislative Branch and Military Construction-VA bills.
“It will be in the Ag bill, which is fully funded,” Cole said.
But the biggest flaw as far as the minority party is concerned is the lack of an extension of the more generous tax credits to defray the cost of health insurance bought on the exchanges. If Democrats remain united, they can block the bill and force a shutdown, which they are betting Trump and his GOP allies on Capitol Hill will get the blame for.
“At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a joint statement. “By refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country straight toward a shutdown.”
Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., was prepping an alternative stopgap measure her party planned to propose as an amendment that would extend the larger health insurance subsidies for a multiyear period which hadn’t yet been finalized.
“We don’t want it just to get through an election cycle, or, you know, get past a pain point for legislators,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Tuesday.
The Democratic amendment was also expected to put strings on the White House’s ability to freeze or rescind appropriated funds.
“An important feature of a Democratic alternative is, one, a guarantee that an agreement is an agreement, and the dollars will be spent and not rescinded or clawed back by the administration,” Kaine said.
David Lerman, Sandhya Raman, Paul M. Krawzak and Olivia M. Bridges contributed to this report.
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