Congressional leaders have unveiled a new stopgap funding proposal to keep the government open through early March, which also supports $2.2 billion to continue avoiding delays on the Navy’s Columbia-class submarine program.
With a partial government shutdown deadline looming at midnight on Friday, the continuing resolution measure would allow lawmakers additional time to complete work on final fiscal year 2024 appropriations legislation.
“While we continue working to negotiate and pass bipartisan, full-year spending bills, it is critical Congress prevent a needless and costly government shutdown come Friday—and that’s exactly what this CR will do. Hammering out serious bipartisan funding bills is no easy task but I am going to continue working nonstop with my colleagues to pass the strongest possible bills—and soon. No one back home wants to see a shutdown or chaos, so let’s quickly pass this CR and work to finalize serious appropriations bills, free of partisan poison pills, that protect key investments in our country’s future,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
Under the current two-step CR, agencies and programs covered by the Military Construction-VA, Agriculture, Energy-Water and Transportation-HUD spending bills, are funded until Jan. 19, while all remaining agencies and programs, to include defense, are covered until Feb. 2.
The Senate is set to hold a procedural vote on Tuesday evening to begin moving forward on the CR proposal, which keeps the “laddered” approach and extends the two funding deadlines until March 1 and March 8.
“The focus of this week will be to pass this extension as quickly as we can. Time is of the essence. If we don’t act soon, the government will run out of funding at midnight this Friday, Jan. 19, just a few days away,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said during floor remarks on Tuesday. “If both sides continue to work in good faith, I’m hopeful that we can wrap up work on the CR no later than Thursday.”
The CR proposal, unveiled on Sunday, follows a bipartisan spending agreement rolled out earlier this month to finalize fiscal year 2024 spending toplines, to include $886 billion for defense (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).
“We now have a framework agreement to allow us to finally begin the hard work of negotiating—and passing—full-year spending bills. We cannot afford to delay further, so I will be working with my colleagues around the clock in the coming days to prevent a needless shutdown and pass bipartisan spending bills free of partisan poison pills that protect key investments and help meet the challenges our constituents are facing,” Murray said at the time.
After including more than $600 million and then $3.3 billion in anomalies for the Columbia-class program in the prior two CRs, the new proposal also includes $2.2 billion so the Navy can continue work to keep building the second ballistic missile submarine.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti, Chief of Naval Operations, has previously said the anomalies are “absolutely critical” for avoiding delays on the Columbia-class program (Defense Daily, Oct. 3 2023).
The House in late September passed its defense spending legislation, which received strong opposition from Democrats over its nearly $2 billion cut to multi-year procurement for select munitions and the inclusion of a slew of GOP-led proposals they’ve criticized as “poison pills” and “needlessly divisive” (Defense Daily, Sept. 29 2023).
The Senate has yet to pass FY ‘24 defense funding, while the Appropriations Committee advanced a version of the legislation this past July (Defense Daily, July 27 2023).