Republican congressional leaders are making plans for a new spending punt as the shutdown drags on, and any new version is likely to postpone the next deadline until 2026.
House and Senate GOP leaders are debating a wide range of options for a new continuing resolution to fund the government, given that their current preferred vehicle funds the government only through Nov. 21. The most likely option would run into mid to late January, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private conversations.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed Wednesday that a longer stopgap is under consideration, but he insisted it wouldn’t jam lawmakers up against a holiday deadline. His comments come after GOP hard-liners warned privately that they will not accept a December deadline, preferring April or later.
“Democrats love the Christmas Eve, you know, omnibus bad deal. We’re not going to do that,” Scalise told reporters Wednesday.
President Donald Trump will have to muscle any reworked CR through Congress, and his sign-off will be key. While hard-liners want a longer horizon, appropriators who are trying to craft new full-year spending bills want a shorter deadline. Speaker Mike Johnson has criticized stopgap bills in the past, at one point saying he was presiding over his last CR, only to pass several more since.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), who was critical of leadership messaging on the shutdown on a Tuesday GOP conference call, said in an interview Wednesday she is wary of voting for any additional continuing resolutions.
“As far as the CR, I was reticent to vote for it to begin with, because I don’t like the spending limits that have been set up by Democrats — I have voted against those spending limits,” Van Duyne said. “So I don’t think that the Democrats, who are voting against this, understand the gift that they were handed.”
Asked about a revised bill with a longer deadline, she said, “I can’t tell you how I’m going to vote on legislation I haven’t seen.”
House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in a Bloomberg interview Wednesday floated a stopgap into December 2026, an unusually long measure that would extend past the start of the next fiscal year — and the midterm elections.
GOP appropriators are certain to balk at a punt of that length and are floating their own, shorter timelines. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in an interview earlier this week she would be wary of going much past the end of this year.
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