A Fight for Funding
With 54 calendar and 12 session days until the election, Congress has some important unfinished business: funding the government. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) unveiled his continuing resolution that would provide stopgap funding through March 2025. Following some dissent, the first procedural vote was pulled from the calendar yesterday. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) is working to persuade the dozen Republican objectors to support the bill, saying that “everything is doable.”
Regardless of the national election outcome, Speaker Johnson faces internal leadership elections, either for Speaker or House minority leader during the lame duck session. This funding fight will be one of, if not the final, major piece of legislation before those elections happen.
On the other side of the Capitol, Senate Democrat Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Senate Democrats and House Republicans aren’t that far apart on a deal to avoid a government shutdown but emphasized that Democrats would not accept tougher voter registration requirements as part of any short-term spending deal. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said that he would take a clean continuing resolution and move forward with it.
September 12th, 2024
