Congress Faces Tight Deadline To Avoid Government Shutdown Amid Intraparty Division

When Congress returns to Washington next month, members will have barely three weeks to agree on how to avoid a government shutdown. Congress has plenty of recent experience beating such deadlines, but strong intraparty ideological differences could make this one more challenging.

There is widespread agreement, across chambers and across the aisle, that there is not enough time before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 to pass all the appropriations bills, so a stopgap funding measure — a continuing resolution (CR) — will be in order. The question is, what will it look like?

“I mean, I'm sure there's going to be a difference of opinion,” said Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK2) in a phone interview Wednesday.

Brecheen acknowledges the differences will be, not just between Republicans and Democrats, but also between members of the House Republican caucus. Brecheen and fellow members of the ultraconservative Freedom Caucus see an opportunity, as he stated on the social media platform X, to “use our leverage in the September spending fight toward preventing illegals from voting in our elections …”

Despite overwhelming data showing that noncitizen voting is extremely rare in the United States, especially in federal elections, Rep. Brecheen insists it's happening more than people know and says it's 'common sense' to attach a GOP bill requiring that voters provide documentary proof of citizenship at the time of registration — the SAVE Act — to the CR.

“And so we think tying those two together and then pitch it to the Senate and say, 'Show the American people that you really don't want illegals to vote.'”

More moderate Republicans in the House may be hoping leadership does not choose that path.

“I prefer spending bills to be spending bills,” said House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK4) in an interview last month.

Rep. Cole supports the voter registration bill but doesn't like the idea of using a must-pass spending bill as 'leverage' to try and force Democrats to support it.

“The trade-off is always, 'Well, if we do that, does that cost us the votes that we need to move something essential through?' So, that becomes a political calculation.” explained Cole.

Brecheen and his conservative colleagues also plan to push for the continuing resolution to extend current funding into next February or March, when, if all goes as they believe it will, Donald Trump will be back in the White House and Republicans will control both the House and Senate.

“We want to take it into a Republican administration to make the decisions on spending levels,” Brecheen stated.

But Cole and others will be advocating for a shorter-term CR, one that extends funding only into December, in essence forcing the current Congress to finish the appropriations business it started.

“The new president takes some time to get their people in place,” Cole said. “They’ve got to get Senate confirmations done, they’ve got to write their own budget, they shouldn’t have to do the work of the last administration and the last president.”

Still, Cole said that if Trump does win in November and indicates he wants to put his fingerprints on the remainder of the FY 2024 budget, then he'd support a CR that goes into the new year.