President Biden on Friday signed a stopgap funding measure to avoid a partial government shutdown, allowing lawmakers additional time to complete work on final fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills.
The continuing resolution (CR) extension pushes back the two funding deadlines to March 8 and March 22, and arrives following congressional leaders’ announcement earlier in the week of a bipartisan agreement on a framework for six of the 12 fiscal year 2024 spending bills.
“I am really glad that we have a clear consensus that no one wants to see a government shutdown and that preventing one now will require a very short CR so we can continue making good progress on our full-year funding bills,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, said on the floor ahead of the Senate’s vote on the extension measure. “I have been at the table for a long time now, pushing to make progress every single day, and we are genuinely close. If bipartisan cooperation prevails, I am very confident we can at long last—at long last—wrap up our FY ‘24 bills.”
The House on Thursday afternoon voted 320-99 to pass the CR, before the Senate approved the measure with a 77-13 vote later that evening, sending the bill to the president’s desk for final signature.
The extension was approved as Congress was staring down the first of two government shutdown deadlines under its laddered CR approach, with funding for agencies and programs covered by the Military Construction-VA, Agriculture, Energy-Water and Transportation-HUD spending bills set to expire on March 1 and all remaining agencies and programs, to include defense, on March 8.
Murray, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) along with Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), announced on Wednesday they’d reached a bipartisan agreement on the six appropriations bills that fall under the earlier deadline and said the plan is to complete the test and vote on final passage before March 8.
The remaining six bills, including the defense budget, will be finalized and passed before March 22, according to the lawmakers’ joint statement.
“To give the House and Senate Appropriations Committee adequate time to execute on this deal in principle, including drafting, preparing report language, scoring and other technical matters, and to allow members 72 hours to review, a short-term continuing resolution to fund agencies through March 8 and the 22 will be necessary, and voted on by the House and Senate this week,” the Congressional leaders wrote in their statement ahead of Thursday’s CR vote.
In early January, Congressional leaders unveiled a bipartisan agreement on FY ‘24 spending toplines, to include $886 billion for defense (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).
The under secretaries for each of the military services warned this week that a year-long CR would require tens of billions of dollars in reprogramming and prioritize current operations above personnel, acquisition and modernization (Defense Daily, Feb. 28).