The House and Senate are both in session today, with government funding set to run out in just 11 days. Congress looks like it’s actually getting further from, not closer to, a solution as House Republicans were hoping to sort things out at a private meeting this morning, but at the moment their two leading options look to be in trouble. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has floated the idea of a “laddered” continuing resolution, an almost never used stopgap spending patch to keep the government open. The maneuver was last used in 1991, in President George H.W. Bush’s GOP administration. Separately, Johnson has also told Senate Republicans he’s looking at a stopgap funding bill to January 15th. That could punt supplemental spending priorities such as Ukraine and Israel aid, as well as border policy changes, into January which are currently unresolved. Although it’s not entirely clear how a “laddered CR” would work, it appears that such an approach would create a series of rolling shutdown threats focused on specific parts of the government, forcing lawmakers to concentrate on passing separate funding bills, one at a time. Republicans have long called for a return to “regular order” in the House, in which lawmakers pass the 12 annual funding bills individually, rather than wrapping them into one “omnibus” package before Christmas, and the laddered CR may provide a way to achieve that goal, in whole or in part.
For today, the Senate will consider the nomination of Monica M. Bertagnolli to be Director of the National Institutes of Health as well as the nomination of Kenly Kiya Kato to be United States District Judge for the Central District of California, the nomination of Julia E. Kobick to be United States District Judge for the District of Massachusetts and the nomination of Ramon Ernesto Reyes, Jr. to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
The House is expected to continue work on H.R. 4820 – Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024. The House may also consider two Resolutions related to Representative Rashida Tlaib (R-Michigan): H. Res. __ – Censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and H. Res. __ – Censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for antisemitic activity and sympathizing with terrorist organizations.
House Republicans are also working to take up the Financial Services spending bill that funds the IRS, Treasury Department, federal courts and other independent agencies this week.
