Politics

House Leaves For Early Recess Despite Failing To Pass Over Half Of Its Major Spending Bills

Speaker Mike Johnson (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

The House adjourned a week early on Thursday and won’t be back in session until mid September despite only passing five of the 12 appropriations bills that are due at the beginning of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.

So far, the House has passed their Defense, Homeland Security, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, State-Foreign Operations and most recently the Department of Interior-EPA appropriations bills. Lawmakers will likely have to resort to a continuing resolution, which is a temporary continuation of the current budget that Congress enacts to avoid a government shutdown just five weeks out from election day. 

The House still has to pass their Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Financial Services, Labor-Education, Legislative and Transportation appropriations bills before the Oct. 1. deadline if they want to avoid a continuing resolution. With just a three week window, the House will likely pursue other avenues to ensure the federal funding continues.

Meanwhile, the Senate has not yet passed any of the five appropriations bills that were put through the House. The Senate will remain in session through next week and won’t return until mid September.

The House GOP is hoping to attach the SAVE Act to the CR which would force Democrats to take a stand on the bill, Punchbowl reported. The SAVE Act, which passed the House on July 10, aims to curb illegal immigrants from voting by providing proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration.

Some House conservatives want to push the deadline through next year with the hopes that Trump will be in office, while other House Republicans are hoping for a smoother transition into the next presidential term, according to Punchbowl. House Speaker Mike Johnson has not yet decided if he prefers the CR to go through December or January.

“There’s a lot of different ideas on the table and we’re trying to work through that — what makes the most sense,” Johnson told Punchbowl. “There’s good arguments for different approaches.” 

The last time the House failed to pass all appropriations bills was in October 2023, which prompted Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz to file a motion to vacate former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s chair. McCarthy was eventually ousted in a 216-210 vote, Republican Reps. Gaetz, Bob Good, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Rosendale, Andy Biggs, Ken Buck and Nancy Mace voted alongside 208 Democrats.

As of February, the House passed four CR’s to keep the government’s from shutting down, the most recent passing the House and the Senate on February 29, which extended the current federal funding to avoid amid concerns of a government shutdown. The three previous CR’s for fiscal year 2024 were passed on Jan. 18, Nov. 15 and Sept. 30.

Featured image credit: Speaker Mike Johnson (Screen Capture/CSPAN)