Shutdown Avoided

A government shutdown has been avoided as Congress finally passed a new Continuing Resolution at the last minute keeping the government open through mid-March. The House approved the same bill it defeated yesterday after removing a debt limit provision and the Senate followed suit just after the midnight deadline. President Biden is expected to sign the bill expeditiously.

None of the 12 FY2025 appropriations bills have cleared Congress. The government has been operating under a Continuing Resolution or CR that expired a little over two hours ago at midnight, December 20.

The House and Senate negotiated a new bipartisan CR extending the deadline to March 14, 2025, but on Wednesday just before the House was about to vote on it, Elon Musk, as co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s government efficiency commission, objected to what he considered “pork.”  Trump soon joined Musk’s opposition and added a surprise demand that a new version not only eliminate most of the provisions supported by Democrats, but also suspend the debt limit so it would happen while President Biden was still in office rather than after he was inaugurated.

A new bill meeting those demands failed decisively on Thursday with almost all Democrats and some Republicans objecting in particular to the debt limit provision.

Late in the afternoon yesterday (Friday), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) brought a revised version of the bill to the floor that omitted the debt limit provision.

Democrats expressed deep concern about Musk’s role in upending congressional consideration of the legislation since he is not an elected official, but in the end voted in favor of passing the bill in order to avoid a government shutdown at midnight.  The final tally was 366-34-1. All 34 no votes were Republican. One Democrat voted present.

The bill then went to the Senate, which approved it early this morning, December 21, by a vote of 85-11. It now goes to the President for signature. Although it is past the midnight deadline, the impact on government operations is expected to be negligible.

In addition to keeping the government operating through March 14, 2025, the bill provides funding for disaster relief, including $740 million for NASA to repair facilities damaged by hurricanes and other natural disasters in FY2023 and FY2024. That’s an increase over the $400 million requested in an April 2024 supplemental, which was never acted upon, to repair NASA communications equipment in Guam damaged by Typhoon Mawar in May 2023 and facilities at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California impacted by Hurricane Hilary in August 2023.  Typhoon Mawar also damaged U.S. Space Force equipment in Guam. The CR includes $37.9 million in Operations and Maintenance and another $90 million in procurement for USSF recovery from Mawar plus Hurricanes Helene and Milton.