House approves funding bill hours before government shutdown deadline

Hours before a midnight government shutdown, the House approved a new plan late Friday from Speaker Mike Johnson that would temporarily fund government shutdown hours before the deadline, sending the bill to the Senate for consideration without President-elect Donald Trump’s debt limit demand after a whirlwind week on Capitol Hill.

The chamber voted 366-34-1 to approve the legislation, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed for passage since GOP leadership brought the bill to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process.

All Democrats except one — Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), who voted present — joined 170 Republicans in voting yes.

Speaker Mike Johnson said earlier Friday that the new spending plan does not include Trump’s demand to suspend the debt limit. Research for children’s health, a crackdown on junk fees, pay hikes for lawmakers and more were also jettisoned from the legislation.

The legislation would extend current fiscal levels until mid-March, provide $110 billion in relief to help natural disaster survivors and aid farmers, and grant an extension for the farm bill, which must be reauthorized.

The bill was expected to pass the Senate, which will first vote on a Social Security bill that would expand benefits for individuals who received smaller payouts because they had pensions or disability considerations and for spouses of recipients who received smaller payouts because they earned income from government pensions.

The original plan negotiated between House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Democrats in both chambers ran more than 1,500 pages, while the legislation the House approved on Friday was just over 100 pages and dropped some policies unrelated to government spending.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where it is likely to also receive bipartisan support, although timing for passage was unclear.

Trump and his billionaire buddy Elon Musk helped defeat the original bill, arguing it included government waste.

Johnson’s first attempt to pass a smaller funding bill failed on Thursday, but his second attempt succeeded on Friday after he dropped a demand from Trump to suspend the debt ceiling for two years.

Both the original measure and the one that passed kept the government operating until mid-March and devoted about $110 billion in aid to victims of natural disasters and farmers.