House Starts Summer Recess Early as Spending Bills Stall
Unable to pass some of their key spending bills for fiscal year 2025, House Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they are canceling votes planned for next week, moving up the start date of their summer recess. The last votes are now scheduled to occur tomorrow, after which lawmakers will adjourn for a six-week break.
The House will not return until September 9, just three weeks before the end of the fiscal year. The failure of the House to pass the full suite of 12 spending bills for fiscal year 2025, along with the Senate’s failure to pass any of them, all but guarantees that Congress will need to provide some kind of short-term funding at the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, or face a government shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier this year that he’d like to pass as many of the 12 appropriations bills as possible by August 1, sending them to the Senate before the long summer recess begins. But the House GOP pulled the plug on that ambitious timeline after internal disagreements led to failed and canceled votes. A planned vote to fund the Department of Energy was canceled late Tuesday, though it could get a last-minute vote on Thursday, along with a bill funding the Interior Department.
Familiar problems: The Republican efforts to pass the 12 spending bills hit some familiar speed bumps. Right-wing lawmakers insisted on adding culture war amendments to some of the bills, touching on issues such as abortion, gender status and climate change, weakening support from moderates while guaranteeing the bills would fail should they make it to the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Some Republicans questioned the wisdom of their leadership’s approach. “Trying to pass 12 separate Republican appropriation bills, that the Democrat controlled Senate will NEVER vote on. For what? Messaging?” asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who sometimes embraces questionable messaging efforts of her own. “When the reality that we ALL know is that we will be forced to vote on a CR by Sept 30th which is the government funding deadline. But for some reason that’s not being discussed even though we all know it.” (CR refers to a continuing resolution, the legislative vehicle Congress typically uses to pass short-term funding.)
The bottom line: Progress on the 2025 appropriations bills will likely come to a halt after tomorrow, raising the odds that the federal government will be operating on short-term funding until after the election, and possibly much longer.