Democrats Signal Support for Johnson's Plan to Avoid Shutdown Ahead of Vote
New York Times
With funding for federal agencies set to expire at midnight on Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson moved late Monday night to bring the spending bill to the House floor under special expedited procedures that require a supermajority for passage, meaning that substantial Democratic help would be needed. The maneuver by the newly elected speaker — who won his post only three weeks ago — came after hard-right lawmakers increasingly said they would not support the measure because it maintained government spending at current levels.
A vote was expected late Tuesday afternoon.
House Democratic leaders have yet to state an official position on the bill. Many of them have questioned the proposal because it contains two staggered deadlines for funding different parts of the federal government, one on Jan. 19 and one on Feb. 2. But an increasing number of Democrats have privately said that they planned to vote for it because it did not include any spending cuts or policy changes — both demands of hard-right Republicans — and because they saw no other way to prevent a shutdown.
“Our current evaluation of the continuing resolution presented by Speaker Johnson is that it does not include extraneous and extreme right-wing policy provisions,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said on NPR, adding that some in his caucus continued to have concerns about the proposal’s two funding deadlines.
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