WASHINGTON — Congress overwhelmingly passed a funding bill Wednesday to avert a government shutdown next week after House Republicans rejected a proposal by President Donald Trump to require Americans nationwide to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.
The Senate passed the bill on a 78-18 vote Wednesday evening, after it had passed the House 341-82 earlier, with opposition from Republicans in both chambers.
House Republican leaders, facing internal defections within their party, relied heavily on Democratic votes to approve the short-term measure. The bill will be sent to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it well before a shutdown deadline on Tuesday. Both chambers adjourned for an extended recess this week and won’t return to Washington until after the Nov. 5 election.
The bill, negotiated by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, and Democratic leaders, would fund the government at current budget levels through Dec. 20, setting up a new spending fight just before the holidays. It also provides an additional $231 million for the Secret Service, including for election-related work, in the wake of two assassination attempts on President Trump.
President Trump has openly argued that Republican lawmakers should shut down the government unless he passes his citizenship verification voting bill, known as the SAVE Act, even though it is already illegal and rare for foreign nationals to vote in federal elections.
But after the House of Representatives rejected a combined government funding package and the SAVE Act last week, Johnson withdrew the Trump-backed election bill and sent a mostly clean new spending bill to Congress. Johnson and other key Republicans have defended the move, arguing that a GOP-led government shutdown just 35 days before Election Day amounts to “political malfeasance.”
Johnson denied that he was “running against President Trump” over the voting bill, insisting the two have remained in close contact throughout the funding battle and that they both believe the SAVE Act is crucial to ensuring election integrity.
“I’m not running against President Trump. I’ve had lengthy conversations with him and he’s very unhappy about the situation. His concern is election security and that’s my concern too. It’s a concern for all of us,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday.
Johnson criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for not taking up the SAVE Act as a standalone bill in the Senate. “We passed the SAVE Act over the summer, and now it’s sitting on Chuck Schumer’s desk gathering dust, and it pisses us off,” Johnson said. “President Trump understands the dilemma we’re in right now, and there’s no divide between us.”
If the stopgap bill passes, it would mean another battle over a government shutdown during the lame-duck session after the election, but it would give both parties an advantage in knowing the balance of power next year.
“I think the vast majority of Congress doesn’t want a government shutdown,” said Sen. John Boozman, R-Arkansas. “So let’s get through the election and decide what we want to do.”
The short-term funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), needed a two-thirds majority to pass the House because it was brought to the floor through an expedited procedure called a “suspension of the rules,” which was necessary because conservatives on the Rules Committee who are sympathetic to Johnson had refused to allow the bill to move forward in committee.
“It’s just postponing the problem,” lamented Rep. Dan Bishop (R-C.), a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus that opposes CR.
Instead of blaming Johnson, former Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-Pa.) blamed Senate Democrats for failing to pass any of the 12 government funding bills for the new fiscal year.
“You always blame us, but the Senate hasn’t submitted a budget at all. Zero,” Perry said. “You’re supposed to have a dance partner, and our partner isn’t showing up.”
Schumer said he was pleased House Republicans had learned that “partisan scare tactics” don’t work on funding, and accused them of wasting time.
“There will be no shutdown because, at the end of the day, House Republicans have decided to work with us. … I hope that the House has learned once again that listening to the far right on important issues like funding our government and avoiding a default does not produce any useful, constructive results,” Schumer said before Wednesday’s vote. “Indeed, I hope that this positive bipartisan outcome sets the tone for more constructive bipartisan efforts when we return to Congress in the fall.”
