US House approves short-term funding bill to avert government shutdown

The US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved legislation to prevent a government shutdown through the midterms, as both parties opted to defuse a volatile dispute ahead of the November elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

A continuing resolution (CR) authorizing government spending until 11 December passed the House by a 370-48 vote, with only 19 Republicans and 29 Democrats in opposition. Had it not passed, lawmakers would have had until the end of September to approve new funding or face a government shutdown.

The measure, which keeps federal spending at their current levels until the CR expires, now heads to Trump’s desk, after the Senate approved it last month by an overwhelming margin.

In July, the House passed its own CR that would have authorized government spending until 4 December, but most Democrats rejected it for funding immigration enforcement agencies without including new guardrails on their conduct that they had demanded, and the Senate never took it up.

The relatively uneventful end to the annual government funding debate comes as lawmakers step up their campaigning ahead of the 3 November elections, in which most forecasters believe Democratic candidates have an edge in retaking the majority in the House of Representatives.

There are mounting signs that the minority may also be able to regain control of the Senate by winning seats in at least three states that voted for Trump two years ago, as the president struggles with approval ratings driven lower by persistent inflation and the war with Iran.

In the run-up to the vote, top House Democrats said they were ready to support the Senate measure, noting it included policy tweaks that the party supported. Among those was a delay until 11 December on a new rule by the White House office of management and budget that Democrats feared would allow the Trump administration to cancel grants at any time for any reason.

“Given that the objectives that we had were met, I think that there’s going to be broad bipartisan support,” Pete Aguilar, the Democratic caucus chair, told reporters ahead of the vote.

Tensions flared among House Democrats later on Tuesday, when representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington unexpectedly joined Republicans to help House speaker Mike Johnson pass a procedural rule governing debate on a suite of GOP-backed bills.

The Democrats’ votes effectively salvaged Johnson’s agenda in the face of a conservative revolt that risked tanking Republicans’ legislative priorities.

While Golden, who is retiring at the end of his term, and Gluesenkamp Perez, who is running for re-election in a district Trump won in 2024, often buck their party, the move was highly unusual and prompted a sharp rebuke from Democratic leadership.

In a joint statement, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, whip Katherine Clark and Aguilar said the two lawmakers had “blindside[d] the entire House Democratic Caucus” and called their actions a “significant breach of trust”.

“It is an action that necessitates a serious response, and we have asked the Committee on Caucus Rules to take this up in short order,” they said.

Passage of the rule paved the way on Tuesday for a vote on a resolution denouncing socialism in “all its forms”, which passed the divided chamber with the support of Republicans and eight Democrats.

Tuesday’s floor action was a reminder of the deep divisions within the Democratic ranks after losing control of both houses of Congress in the 2024 elections.

Without power in Congress, they have used the Senate’s filibuster to force the government closed and push the Republican majority into compromising over their preferred policies.

Last year, Senate Democrats instigated a government shutdown by refusing to vote for any spending bill that did not extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans.

That led to the longest funding lapse in US history, but ultimately no agreement to keep the cost offsets going after the shutdown ended 43 days later.

Some government agencies shut down again briefly earlier this year after Democrats held up a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in protest of the killings by federal agents of two US citizens in Minneapolis during an intensive immigration enforcement drive.

While an agreement was reached to resolve that blockade, the two parties did not agree on funding the DHS for weeks, as Democrats held out for reforms to immigration enforcement operations.