By KEVIN FREKING
WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders announced an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill that will fund federal agencies for about three months, averting a potential partial government shutdown when the new budget year begins Oct. 1 and delaying final decisions until after the elections in November.
Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but an additional $231 million was added to strengthen the Secret Service following the two assassination attempts on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, and additional money was added to assist with, among other things presidential transition.
Lawmakers did that struggled to reach this point as the current financial year draws to a close at the end of the month. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had tied temporary funding to a mandate that would have forced states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.
But Johnson abandoned that approach to reach an agreement, even as Trump emphasized that there should be no emergency measure without a voting requirement.
Negotiations between the two sides began in earnest shortly afterwards, with leaders agreeing to extend funding until mid-December. That gives the current Congress the opportunity to craft a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than passing that responsibility to the next Congress and president.
In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow and bare-bones” and would “include only those expansions that are absolutely necessary.”
“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the current circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has shown and current polls confirm, shutting down the government within forty days of a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats would review the bill in its entirety before this week’s vote, but with the agreement, “Congress is now on a bipartisan path to end the government that would harm ordinary Americans.”
Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had said Friday that the talks were going well.
“So far, nothing has come forward that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want it to disrupt the election. So no one says, ‘I have to have this or we’re going to walk.’ It’s just not like that.”
Johnson’s previous efforts failed in the Democratic-controlled Senate and faced opposition from the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he was fighting for their request.
The end result – government funding effectively on autopilot – was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any desire for the craft that often leads to a shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the same agreement could have been reached two weeks ago, but “Speaker Johnson chose to go the MAGA route and wasted valuable time.”
“As I have said throughout this process, there is only one way to get things done, with bipartisan, bicameral support,” Schumer said.
Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure across the finish line this week. The agreement on the short-term measure does not mean that it will be easy to reach a final expenditure settlement in December. The election results could also affect political calculations if one party fares much better than the other, potentially setting off the battle early next year.
Secret Service funding also comes with strings attached, with lawmakers making it conditional on the Department of Homeland Security providing certain information to a House task force and a Senate committee investigating the assassination attempts against Trump.
In a recent letter, the Secret Service told lawmakers that a funding shortfall was not the reason for Trump’s security failure when a gunman climbed onto an unsecured roof on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. But acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said this week that the agency had “immediate needs” and that he is talking to Congress.
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