WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders are scrambling for an agreement on how to keep the government funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, with only two weeks to go until the shutdown deadline.
It’s a drama that unfolds every year: With time running out on the government funding clock, lawmakers are poised to wait until the last minute to get some agreement passed with just minutes to spare. And it typically requires a major lift from both parties to get it across the finish line.
That makes things all the more difficult in a Republican-controlled Washington as Democrats are threatening to withhold support unless GOP leaders can assure President Donald Trump won’t go rogue with the congressionally approved funds. That’s something Republicans are not willing to promise — at least not yet.
That sets the stage for a rocky road ahead, and limited time to find a solution.
How did we get here?
It’s five months into the 2025 fiscal year and Congress has failed to complete the budget. It raises the question: How did lawmakers find themselves in this position?
Nearly every year, congressional leaders have ambitious plans to pass appropriations bills ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline and have the federal budget settled by the beginning of the fiscal year. And nearly every year, that doesn’t happen.
In order to pass a budget, lawmakers must pass 12 individual appropriations bills that allocate funds across the federal government. In past years, many of these bills have been combined into one massive bill called an “omnibus” or into smaller packages referred to as “minibuses.” But when House Republicans took control of the lower chamber in 2023, they vowed to do that no longer.
Instead, they said, they would pass each appropriations bill individually. But that goal has yet to become a reality.
It reflects a trend in congressional history. In fact, lawmakers have only completed the appropriations process before the fiscal year deadline only four times in the last 40 years — a point Sen. John Curtis recently made in a Deseret News op-ed. The last time Congress managed to pass its budget on time was in 1996.
House Republicans have a plan — and it appears to have Trump’s support
It appears unlikely lawmakers will have enough time to complete the 12 appropriations bills, pass them in both the House and Senate, and get them over to Trump’s desk before the March 14 deadline.
As of Friday, the House has only passed five of the 12 appropriations bills and the Senate has not passed any. Instead, Republican leaders seem poised to pass another continuing resolution, extending 2024 spending levels through the end of fiscal year 2025.
Appropriations cardinals met with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday to strategize on a path forward. Emerging from that meeting, Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, told reporters a CR through the end of the fiscal year was the likeliest option.
Details of that CR are not yet known. House Republican leaders could put forth a clean resolution, which would extend current government funding levels and nothing more.
However, some Republicans have suggested including provisions to codify spending cuts being made by the Department of Government Efficiency — something that would not get support from Democrats.
“Republican leadership’s plan to pass a full-year continuing resolution with Musk’s devastating ‘DOGE cuts’ would give Trump new flexibility to spend funding as he sees fit,” Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, top Democratic appropriators, said in a joint statement on Friday. “While Elon Musk has been calling for a shutdown, Democrats have been working to pass bills that make sure Congress decides whether our schools or hospitals get funding — not Trump or Musk.”
Meanwhile, Trump has backed the idea of a yearlong CR to punt government spending discussions to the next fiscal year.
“We are working very hard to pass a clean, temporary government funding bill (“CR”) to the end of September,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Thursday. “Let’s get it done!”
Trump has not said whether he would push for DOGE cuts to be included in the continuing resolution.
Still, Republicans seem to be backing off that idea. Johnson said on Sunday that incorporating DOGE cuts into government funding legislation would wait until the 2026 fiscal year — noting he would push for a “clean CR” this month instead.
“We’re looking to pass a clean CR to freeze funding at current levels to make sure that the government can stay open while we begin to incorporate all these savings that we’re finding through the DOGE effort and these other sources of revenue,” Johnson told NBC News “Meet the Press.”
It’s not yet clear if a yearlong CR has enough votes to pass in the next two weeks. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a top appropriator in the Senate, has indicated she would not support a continuing resolution until September.
“CRs always create a lot of unintended consequences,” Collins told the Washington Times.
Republicans and Democrats duel in intense blame game for government shutdown
Regardless of what is pushed through, the funding agreement will require Democratic support thanks to Republicans’ slim majorities in both the House and Senate. And so far, that is not guaranteed.
While appropriators have sought to negotiate a spending deal over the last few months, both Republicans and Democrats have blamed the other for abandoning bipartisan talks in the final stretch before the deadline.
“It’s incredibly disappointing that Republican leadership is walking away from bipartisan negotiations to fund the government — and raising the risk of a shutdown in so doing,” Murray and DeLauro said in their Friday statement.
Republican leaders view it differently.
“We’re pretty far apart right now, but it is not because of the Republicans,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s because of the Democrats.”
Johnson’s comments refer to a key demand being made by Democrats to assure that Trump allocates the funds as they are approved by Congress. Democrats have repeatedly decried attempts by the new Trump administration to freeze approved appropriations and block them from going toward federal agencies.
Republicans have balked at these demands, claiming they infringe upon Trump’s authority as president to spend government funds as he pleases.
“Our differences with our Democratic colleagues on some of the restrictions they’re demanding on what we consider legitimate presidential authority — we’re not moving on that,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said on Wednesday.
The disagreements and lack of a topline deal have left Republicans and Democrats at a standstill — and it has members playing a brutal game of who’s to blame for a possible shutdown.