House and Senate leaders are honing in on a CR that would keep government funded until late March.
Speaker Mike Johnson told us in a brief interview late Tuesday that he anticipates the stopgap funding bill will expire in late March 2025. A final decision is expected in the coming days.
Typical of the sunny optimism that Johnson has become known for, the speaker told us that his “hope and intention” is that House and Senate appropriators will finish their work on FY2025 spending bills “well before the deadline” in the first quarter of next year.
House and Senate leadership would like to wrap up a CR deal at some point this week. The government runs out of money on Dec. 20. The CR is expected to carry a disaster aid package and a one-year extension of the farm bill.
House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said no decisions have been made on the CR and he was out of the loop of the decision-making process. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on Appropriations, said top budget writers are “all of the view that the earlier” the CR expires in 2025 “the better.”
In an interesting twist, there’s now talk about inserting language in the CR that would transfer RFK Stadium from the federal government to the D.C. government. This move would allow the Washington Commanders to build a new stadium in D.C.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris met separately with Johnson and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Monday.
Johnson signaled that he is in favor of inserting this language.
“There’s a good possibility,” Johnson said. “It seems like a good idea to me.”
The WaPo reported that Maryland lawmakers are trying to get D.C. to trade one of their Air National Guard squadron in exchange for supporting the stadium bill.
Johnson said he’ll begin socializing all of this with the House GOP conference today.
Johnson met with the House Freedom Caucus members at their weekly meeting on Tuesday night to pitch his CR plan, which we first scooped.
HFC members pushed back heavily on Johnson’s proposal to attach a disaster aid package to the CR during their meeting. Reps. Bob Good (R-Va.), Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) asked for offsets for the aid package. The White House has requested nearly $99 billion in emergency disaster funding without offsets, although Congress is expected to approve far less.
Johnson, meanwhile, implied to members his current plan is the best path to help President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda next year in a GOP-run Washington.
