Speaker Mike Johnson plows ahead with Trump-backed spending deal

House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled his yearlong government funding extension including a defense spending boost and agency cuts.

Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, and the rest of the House GOP largely view the stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, as a way to keep their plan to pass President Trump’s agenda on track.  

The funding extension would keep the government open until Sept. 30, or the end of the current fiscal year. 

Mr. Trump lauded the measure and said that “under the circumstances,” congressional Republicans created a “very good funding bill” that everyone in the party should support. 

“Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order,” the president said on social media. “Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen.”

While Congress has until March 14 to fund the government, the speaker plans to vote on the bill by Tuesday, largely because the House will be out for a minibreak starting Wednesday to let House Democrats hold an issues and policy conference in Virginia. 

House Republican leadership aides described the 99-page bill, which is much longer than a typical stopgap, in a call with reporters ahead of the measure’s release on Saturday as “quite literally as clean a CR that you can draft for these purposes,” spending less than the fiscal 2024 cycle.  

“There’s no Christmas tree effect here,” a leadership aide said. “It’s just what we need to fund the government.” 

Defense spending has routinely accounted for the lion’s share of congressionally approved funding, and the latest CR doesn’t buck that trend, despite calls for deeper cuts across the board. 

The CR includes an $8 billion increase in defense spending from last year. That will likely sate defense hawks concerned about keeping funding levels flat and the effects that could have on the military. 

The bump keeps America atop the global defense spending podium, where the U.S. far outpaces China and Russia. Still, defense spending comes in third to the country’s spending on Medicare and Social Security. 

It also includes an additional $6 billion for veterans’ health care, over $9 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the freeze on $20 billion in IRS funds.

Plus, the deal drops nondefense spending by $13 billion. At least 22 instances in the measure zeroed out funding for programs in assorted agencies, including the Health and Human Services, Energy and Labor departments.

Both defense and nondefense spending came in below the spending caps set by the Fiscal Reduction Act. Defense spending clocked in at over $892 billion, while nondefense spending sits at $708 billion. Republicans found some spending reductions by not including community project funding, better known as earmarks.

Still, the funding extension tees up a collision course with House Democrats, who made their opposition to the deal clear. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called the measure a “power grab” for the White House and Elon Musk, who leads the Department of Government Efficiency. 

“By essentially closing the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect our national security, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have handed their power to an unelected billionaire,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. 

Normally, Democrats are crucial for funding extensions, but this time Mr. Johnson may not need them despite his razor-thin majority.

Even fiscal hawks in the GOP’s House Freedom Caucus and beyond, who rarely vote for a CR, have signaled they would support the measure because they don’t want to hinder the president’s agenda. 

They needed convincing from Mr. Trump himself during a meeting at the White House this week. They were assured that the bill would be a mostly clean funding extension that largely froze funding at its current levels while including some tweaks, known as anomalies, to defense spending and spending bumps for carrying out the Trump administration’s deportation plan. 

Moving through the Senate could be a challenge, too. Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, who routinely opposes funding measures because they don’t cut enough, said he would object to this latest CR. That means at least eight Democrats must vote for it to clear the filibuster hurdle.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted the measure for not including language that would restrict the White House’s ability to decide whether to spend congressionally appropriated funds. 

“Congress — not Trump or Musk — should decide through careful bipartisan negotiations how to invest in our states and districts — and whether critical programs that support students, veterans’ families and patients get funded or not,” Ms. Murray said.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, who preferred not to run with a full-year stopgap bill, appeared to back the measure. 

She said the main focus should be “preventing an unnecessary and costly government shutdown.”