Speaker Mike Johnson is weighing a six-month stopgap funding measure that would kick the fiscal 2025 appropriations wrap-up into the next Congress, a move that could appease conservatives but put the speaker at odds with appropriators.
Government spending will be at the top of Congress’ to-do list in September, before members head back out to the campaign trail in October. With the end of the fiscal year arriving Sept. 30 and slim odds of any full-year spending bills being signed by then, Johnson, R-La., is looking at a continuing resolution that would go into March, avoiding a Christmas pileup of unfinished legislation and potentially giving Republicans more leverage over the final outcome.
That’s in line with what the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus asked for in a Monday statement, urging passage of a CR that runs “into early 2025” so as not to “undermine President [Donald] Trump’s second term with a ‘lame duck’ omnibus in December.” But House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Senate and House Democrats have made clear their preference to wrap up the fiscal 2025 process during the lame-duck session, though Cole has also said the incoming president should have say.
