By Richard Cowan, David Morgan and Bo Erickson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Republican-controlled U.S. Congress looked set to move ahead this week to keep the government funded and avert a partial shutdown beginning on Saturday, as Washington is rocked by President Donald Trump’s rapid moves to slash federal agencies.
Hardline members of the fractious 218-214 House Republican majority — who over the past year repeatedly bucked Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans — have signaled support for the bill, which would keep the government funded at its current levels through September 30, when the current fiscal year ends.
Johnson has said he plans a procedural vote on the measure on Monday and aims for passage on Tuesday, with supporters arguing that the House must clear it to move on to Trump’s agenda of sweeping tax cuts and stepped-up spending on immigration enforcement and the military.
Trump has voiced support for the bill.
Multiple Senate Democrats — who could block the bill thanks to the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster rule but have long bemoaned government shutdowns as needless chaos — have said they would support it rather than further destabilize the government at a time when Trump adviser Elon Musk has ousted more than 100,000 federal workers.
The bill covers discretionary spending, functions like law enforcement and air traffic control, and represents about a quarter of a roughly $6.75 trillion federal budget, which also includes spending for the Social Security retirement program and more than $1 trillion per year on interest payments on the government’s growing $36 trillion debt.
It would increase defense spending by about $6 billion while decreasing non-defense spending by about $13 billion, according to House Republican leadership aides. It would also continue a freeze of $20 billion in funding for the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service previously included in a December stopgap bill.
Lawmakers will face a far more serious deadline later this year when they must address their self-imposed debt ceiling, or risk a disastrous default that would rock the world economy.
The last government shutdown stretched over 35 days in late 2018 and early 2019, during Trump’s first term in office. Repeated brinkmanship by lawmakers over government shutdowns and the debt ceiling has already taken a toll on U.S. creditworthiness.
Two of the three major global credit ratings agencies have stripped the U.S. federal government of its once top-tier rating.
HARDLINERS GET IN LINE
Last year, members of the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus repeatedly refused to vote on government funding bills, particularly the short-term measures known as continuing resolutions that Congress means to take up this week.
Trump’s support for the measure has tipped the balance, and several of their number emerged from a White House meeting last week saying they were inclined to support the bill.
The group’s chair, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, said doing so amounted to support for Trump.
“I am firmly 100% in his corner,” Harris told reporters.
Similarly, Representative Victoria Spartz, an Indiana conservative who nearly blocked the House last month from passing its budget blueprint for the Trump tax agenda, signaled her support.
“I don’t think we have time to do anything else. I’m being realistic,” she told Reuters.
Trump, in a response to questions from reporters on Sunday, said that while a shutdown could happen, he remains optimistic the bill will get passed.
“It could happen. It shouldn’t have happened, and it probably won’t. I think the CR is going to get passed. We’ll see,” he said, referring to a continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
Johnson will need his hardliners’ support as Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the Republican funding bill would violate a bipartisan deal on spending enacted into law in 2023. Some leading Senate Democrats have argued that its structure would give Trump added authorities to move funds around at his will.
“If Republicans decide to take this approach, as Speaker Johnson indicated, it’s his expectation that Republicans are going it alone,” Jeffries said.
SENATE READY
If the bill clears the House, it will move to the Senate where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority and the support of at least seven Democrats will be needed to pass it.
Some Senate Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum said they expected to back the measure.
Moderate Democratic U.S. Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said he would not reject the measure, adding, “That’s chaos. I’ll never vote for chaos.”
Similarly, liberal Democratic U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, signaled support, saying, “Shutdowns are a bad idea. I’m not a shutdown guy.”
Not all were supportive. Moderate U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin, who delivered her party’s rebuttal to Trump’s speech to Congress last week, said she saw little reason to support the bill at a time when Trump and Musk’s cost-cutting campaign is ignoring prior congressional direction on spending.
“Until I see some assurances that whatever we pass next week is going to ensure that the money is spent the way Congress intends… I’m going to withhold my vote,” the Michigan Democrat told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; additional reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)
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