House and Senate leaders released a 1,547-page bill Tuesday evening that funds the federal government through March 14.
We’ll get into the substance of this mammoth bill in a minute. But first, let’s talk about timing for votes on this must-pass legislation. The federal government shuts down at midnight Friday night (although there’s always some wiggle room on weekends). That doesn’t leave much time for lawmakers to get this to the president’s desk.
Speaker Mike Johnson had been intent on sending the bill through the House Rules Committee. That would allow Johnson to pass the measure on the House floor with a simple majority. We have our doubts that the Rules Committee will agree given the rightward lean of the panel.
The speaker did a temperature check Tuesday with hardliners on the Rules Committee — GOP Reps. Chip Roy (Texas), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Ralph Norman (S.C.) — to see whether they’d support a rule for the CR.
But the trio indicated they have a host of demands they’d need in exchange for doing so: adherence to the 72-hour rule for considering legislation, as well as votes on spending offsets and language restricting the sell-off of border wall materials.
Johnson hasn’t agreed to these conditions. So unless something dramatically changes, he’ll have no other choice but to bring the CR up under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. A floor vote has yet to be scheduled, but the general consensus is that the House will take it up on Thursday. That leaves the Senate just one day to clear the measure before Friday’s midnight deadline.
Merry Christmas to everyone. This bill is a Christmas stocking full of legislative goodies designed to get votes.
That’s not unusual for a year-end piece of legislation. But it’s silly to pretend that this is a narrowly tailored spending bill. It’s not. It’s a three-month CR with a pile of other provisions going along for the ride.
The legislation does big things like overhauling pharmacy benefit managers. It also provides $100 billion in disaster relief to the hurricane-stricken Southeast. The bill sets aside $30 billion in aid for farmers.
Of interest to Wall Street, the CR contains language restricting U.S. capital investment in China. That had been a question mark ever since an initial Republican compromise dropped out of the NDAA. And as we reported earlier this month, the measure also delays the implementation of a “beneficial ownership” database designed to crack down on money laundering until 2026.
RFK Stadium will be transferred to the District of Columbia, paving the way for a new Washington Commanders stadium. In turn, the CR transfers an Air National Guard fighter squadron from D.C. to Maryland. Even the American Music Tourism Act of 2024 got a ride in this bill.
Again, this horse-trading isn’t unusual. It’s also not the way Johnson said he’d govern.
On Johnson. The speaker had two choices when it came to government funding: an omnibus or a skinny CR. We made the case that a deck-clearing omnibus was the more logical path. This would ensure Johnson and Capitol Hill could focus on Trump’s legislative agenda instead of wrestling over funding for much of the first quarter.
Johnson didn’t do a skinny CR or an omnibus. He did a CR loaded with a bunch of unrelated stuff and a few big Republican wins. Johnson had to give in to Democrats in order to squeeze billions of dollars of economic assistance for farmers into the measure
Now Johnson is taking heat from all sides over a short-term bill. The HFC is furious. GOP moderates are furious. Elon Musk doesn’t like it. Some hardliners are withholding their public support for Johnson to return as speaker next year.
What happens when you bypass committees. Johnson prides himself on being a light-handed speaker. He didn’t weigh in on the chair fights in the House Republican Steering Committee, as other speakers have in the past.
But twice in the last few weeks, Johnson has gotten involved in committees’ work products.
On the NDAA, Johnson airdropped in language barring gender-affirming care for children of service members. House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said he had no idea Johnson was doing it.
Then Johnson meddled in the Ways and Means Committee’s negotiations over a pair of trade programs that expire in 2025: the African Growth and Opportunity Act and a program granting duty-free access to the U.S. market for Haitian apparel exports.
Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) had closed in on a deal to extend both AGOA and the Haiti trade program for five years each in the CR. Johnson encouraged the negotiations but then greenlit the Haiti program’s inclusion without AGOA.
