Congressional leaders unveiled a catch-all, year-end package Tuesday night that would provide disaster aid along with stopgap funding to keep the government running through mid-March. Heavy rains from Hurricane Helene caused record flooding and damage on Sept. 28 in Asheville, North Carolina. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders unveiled a catch-all, year-end package Tuesday that would provide more than $100 billion in disaster aid and give lawmakers more time to wrap up overdue work on government funding, the farm bill and a handful of other issues they decided not to finish.

The disaster aid section of the package will bolster funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Agriculture, the Small Business Administration and several other federal agencies to continue their ongoing response efforts following a slew of natural disasters during the last two years.

The 1,547-page package would give Congress until mid-March to complete work on the dozen annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law by Oct. 1.

It also extends the farm bill through Sept. 30, 2025. In a victory for corn growers, the bill includes a provision to allow nationwide sales of a gasoline blend that includes up to 15% ethanol throughout the year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during a press conference before the bill was publicly released he had hoped the year-end stopgap spending bill would simply extend current funding until next year, when the GOP will hold the House, Senate and White House.

“But a couple of intervening things have occurred. We had, as we describe them, acts of God. We had these massive hurricanes if you know, in the late fall — Helene and Milton and other disasters,” Johnson said. “We have to make sure that the Americans who were devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need. So we are adding to this a disaster relief package and that’s critically important.”

“Also important is the devastation that is being faced by our farming community,” he said. “The agriculture sector is really struggling. They’ve had effectively three lost years and commodity prices are a bit of a mess. And you have input costs that have skyrocketed because of Bidenomics.”

Johnson defended his decision to attach the other provisions in the stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution. Numerous Republicans have expressed frustration with his choice to bundle all the bills together in one package, instead of moving them individually.

“We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits and that’s what the volume of the pages to this is,” Johnson said.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said in a written statement she would support the bill when that chamber votes on it later this week.

“While I — and so many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle — wish we were voting on full-year funding bills, I am pleased that this package includes important resources for American farmers, emergency defense investments, investments in the Virginia Class submarine program, and increased funding for child care,” DeLauro wrote. “It also includes outbound investment protections I have long fought for to prevent American dollars from fueling the Chinese Communist Party’s policies with our capital and capabilities.”

“However, I am concerned that we could not agree on additional funding for veterans health care, and we must be vigilant in ensuring that the incoming Administration does not ration care promised to every affected veteran,” DeLauro added. “The passage of this bill should mark the beginning of negotiations on final 2025 funding bills. The start of a new Congress does not change the reality that any funding bills will still need the support of Democrats and Republicans in the House and in the Senate in order to become law.”

Hurricanes, tornadoes, bridge collapse

President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve nearly $100 billion in emergency aid to bolster the accounts of several agencies that are helping residents, small businesses, farmers, and local and state governments recover from dozens of natural disasters.

The emergency supplemental request came shortly after Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused widespread devastation throughout Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

The funding will also help communities recover following tornadoes throughout the Midwest; the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland; and severe storms in Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The disaster response section of the spending package would include:

• $29 billion for FEMA’s disaster relief fund

• $21 billion for disaster assistance for farmers and ranchers

• $12 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s community development block grant program for disaster assistance

• $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers and ranchers

• $8 billion for the Department of Transportation to provide disaster relief for federal highways

• $3.25 billion for State and Tribal Assistance Grants for water infrastructure repairs.

• $2.2 billion for the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program

• $1.3 billion to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland

Congress headed for finish line

The package is expected to pass the House and Senate before members depart for their holiday break on Friday. Biden is expected to sign the bill into law.

When Congress convenes again on Jan. 3 for the start of the 119th Congress, the Senate will flip from Democratic to Republican control. The House will remain red, though with a slightly smaller majority and very little, possibly no, room for GOP lawmakers to vote against partisan bills.

Republicans hope they can use unified control of Washington, which will begin after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, to move through sweeping changes to federal spending and policy.

That is one of the reasons, Congress included a second continuing resolution in the package released this week. That stopgap spending bill will avoid a partial government shutdown until at least March 14.

That part of the bill is necessary since Congress has brushed off its responsibility to fund the government by failing to complete work on the dozen annual appropriations bills before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

Lawmakers approved another stopgap spending bill in late September to keep funding levels mostly flat through Dec. 20, but did not use the extra time to negotiate a compromise between the Republican House and Democratic Senate.

GOP leaders have opted to hold over those full-year government funding measures until they control both chambers of Congress next year, in hopes they’ll be able to more closely align the final versions of the 12 bills to their goals.

But Republican leaders will still need Democratic support to get the final spending bills, or another stopgap spending bill, through the Senate next year if they want to avoid a partial government shutdown.

The Senate requires at least 60 lawmakers to vote to advance major legislation toward a final, simple majority passage vote. The GOP will hold 53 seats next year, short of the requirement. Several Republican senators have also staked their reputations on consistently voting against any spending bill, making Democratic votes necessary to avoid a shutdown.

Republicans in the House will also likely need Democrats to move government funding bills through that chamber, given they too have a significant faction of members who refuse to vote for the full-year spending bills and often vote against the short-term stopgap bills as well. 

Farm bill extension

The end-of-year catchall bill released Tuesday also includes another extension for the farm bill through next year, a new version of which Congress was supposed to pass more than a year ago.

Instead, lawmakers in both chambers have prioritized other interests, delaying work on the legislation that authorizes agriculture and nutrition programs.

Congress last approved a farm bill in December 2018, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said at the time would cost $428 billion during the five years it was supposed to cover.

Funding for nutrition, crop insurance, farm commodity programs and conservation accounted for about 99% of the mandatory spending in the law, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Nutrition has become one of the higher price tag items in the farm bill during the last few decades and accounted for about $326 billion of the mandatory spending in the 2018 farm bill. Another $38 billion went to crop insurance, $31 billion to commodities and $29 billion to conservation during the five-year window that has since lapsed.

The nutrition funding goes toward several federal food programs for lower income people, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP and the Emergency Food Assistance Program. 

The Republican House and Democratic Senate have been unable to work through their differences on a new five-year farm bill, despite giving themselves more than a year of extra time.

The bill lawmakers are set to approve this month will give unified Republicans in control of Washington another year to get the work done.

D.C. Deputy Bureau Chief Jacob Fischler contributed to this report. 

The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congress is on track to approve legislation this week that will give lawmakers until mid-December to broker agreement on the annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law before the end of this month.

The stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution, has the broad bipartisan support it needs to move through House and Senate votes this week, though senators will need to reach agreement to vote on the legislation before the Oct. 1 deadline when federal spending runs out.

The 49-page bill, released Sunday after weeks of stalemate as House Republicans went at it alone, is no guarantee that Congress will actually wrap up its work on the full-year bills during the next 12 weeks left before this session of Congress is over, since lawmakers can pass as many stopgap spending bills as they want.

Continuing resolutions essentially extend current spending levels and policy for a set amount of time. They are intended to give the House and Senate additional time to conference final versions of the dozen full-year spending bills.

Nov. 5 election and the lame duck

The election results will likely determine whether the Republican House and Democratic Senate move to reach agreement on the full-year bills during the lame-duck session that will begin after Election Day, or kick the can down the road into next year, when the balance of power could be substantially different.

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, appears inclined toward wrapping up work on the full-year appropriations bills in December, saying during a press conference Tuesday that lawmakers would deal with funding decisions during the lame-duck session.

Johnson signaled that he’s going to try to move all the final, conferenced spending bills across the floor one by one, as opposed to bundling all 12 together in an omnibus or packaging several of the bills together in what’s called a mini-bus. Such large bills regularly draw opposition from conservative Republicans.

“We have broken the Christmas omni and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said. “We don’t want any buses, we’re not going to do any buses.”

The stopgap spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week would set the next deadline for government funding on Dec. 20, four days before Christmas.

Senate and House both struggle

Johnson also laid the blame for Congress not completing work on the full-year government funding bills at the feet of Senate Democrats, arguing that the House did all of its work.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 of the dozen appropriations bills with broadly bipartisan votes, but was unable to garner consensus on the Homeland Security spending bill.

None of those bills have come up on the Senate floor for votes, in part, because it can take weeks in that chamber to move spending bills through the amendment process.

The House Appropriations Committee reported its dozen bills out along party-line votes, without the Democratic support that would be needed for the bills to actually become law during divided government.

House Republican leaders passed five of the bills across the floor, including Defense, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and State-Foreign Operations.

House GOP leaders attempted to pass the Legislative Branch bill, which provides funding for Congress and its associated agencies, but were unsuccessful. House rules allow that chamber to debate and hold votes on bills in a matter of hours, a much faster pace than the days or weeks it often takes the Senate.

Neither Senate leaders nor House leadership have made any effort to conference the full-year spending bills, a process that is needed to reach the bipartisan, bicameral versions that must pass if Congress wants to avoid another stopgap spending bill in December.

The process typically takes at least six weeks, and with both chambers set to leave town at the end of this week for a six-week break, there likely won’t be enough time to conference all the bills before the mid-December deadline that will be set by the continuing resolution.

‘Stay away from poison pills’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Johnson for trying to pass a six-month stopgap spending bill through the House earlier this month, saying it was a waste of time.

That legislation, which didn’t garner the support to pass, included with it a GOP bill that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“If both sides keep working together, if we stay away from poison pills and partisan spectacle, then the American people can rest assured there won’t be a government shutdown,” Schumer said. “But we still have more work to do.”

The Biden administration signaled its support for the stopgap spending bill Tuesday, releasing a Statement of Administration Policy calling “for swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown and to ensure there is adequate time to pass full-year FY 2025 appropriations bills later this year.”

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