The federal government is heading for a shutdown at midnight on Saturday. That’s because Congress has yet to pass any of the 12 one-year spending bills that fund the federal government, and it continues to rely on a temporary stopgap measure to keep funding flowing while lawmakers pass these annual spending bills.
Here’s what you need to know about how we got here:
Why is the federal government almost certain to close?
Under the Constitution, Congress has budgetary power, and it exercises that power by passing legislation to fund the government each year. There are 12 so-called budget bills that run from October 1st, the start of the fiscal year, until midnight the following September 30th.
This year, Congress has not passed any of these measures, which must be approved by both the House and Senate and signed by the president. Without a stopgap solution to temporarily fund federal agencies while the two chambers debate, pass legislation, resolve any differences between the bills, and refer action to President Biden, the government will shut down.
What’s the big disagreement about spending?
During negotiations in the spring to avert a national debt default, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden agreed to limit federal spending for the next two years. They also included an enforcement mechanism to ensure their agreement stands, and introduced a requirement that Congress pass each spending bill individually, rather than combining them into a massive package that lawmakers have resorted to in recent years .
The agreement was passed on a bipartisan basis; But with the hard right opposed, Mr. McCarthy had to rely on Democratic votes to get it through the House.
Right-wing MPs were angry about the deal, which they said allowed far too much spending, and wanted to forego the level of funding agreed upon in it. They want even deeper cuts, which the Senate and White House will almost certainly reject.
What is Congress doing to avert a shutdown?
The Senate is aiming to vote as early as this weekend on a bipartisan spending plan, known as a “continuing resolution” or “CR,” that would keep the government open through Nov. 17 while providing $6 billion in aid to Ukraine aims to provide $6 billion for natural disaster relief in the United States.
But Mr. McCarthy doesn’t have the votes to pass that bill because a group of far-right Republicans are reluctant to continue spending at current levels, even temporarily, and others are opposed to passing a stopgap bill at all.
Mr. McCarthy could most likely pass the Senate plan with a coalition of Republicans and Democrats. But some right-wing Republicans have vowed to try to remove him from his post if he does so.
Instead, Republicans in the House of Representatives worked this week to pass four separate one-year spending bills that cut government funding while being full of extreme political criticisms. These bills, three of which were passed Thursday night, are dead on arrival in the Senate and will neither become law nor prevent a shutdown.
On Friday, McCarthy tried to pass his own stopgap bill, a 30-day fix that would cut spending and impose tough immigration restrictions. The hard right joined with the Democrats to defeat them.
What would it take to reopen the government?
If the government were to shut down, Congress would have to pass a spending measure to temporarily reopen while it works on annual spending bills to fund federal agencies in the next fiscal year. Both would require bipartisan agreements, as the Senate and White House are controlled by Democrats and the House of Representatives by Republicans.
Mr. McCarthy currently has some difficult bills to get this done within his slim majority in the House of Representatives. Or he can try to pass a bill with the Democrats, risking his position as speaker.