House GOP unveils new bill as funding deadline looms

House Republican leadership on Friday afternoon began a last-ditch effort to pass the third iteration of a spending bill first unveiled on Tuesday.

The new bill would extend the government’s current spending levels through March 2025, provide over $100 billion in national disaster relief, and provide a one-year lifeline extension to agriculture-related government programs. The government’s previous funding agreement, a continuing resolution, expires Friday. Without funding in place, some federal offices would have to temporarily shut their doors.

How did we get here? The newest package of legislation very closely resembles key provisions in two previously failed spending proposals:

The first package, unveiled on Tuesday night, was considerably larger and included many bipartisan agreements unlikely to have been implemented under a Trump administration. Notably, it did not include an extension of the debt ceiling. That package died before it ever came to the floor when Republicans balked at the 1,547-page bill. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., scrapped it, opting to start from scratch when it became clear the majority of the conference would not vote for it.

The second package, which failed on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday night in a 174-235 vote, was a slimmed-down 116-page version of the first bill—a “skinny” continuing resolution as many lawmakers dubbed it. The second package did include an extension of the debt ceiling. Democrats voted against the bill, claiming Republicans had thrown out weeks’ worth of bipartisan negotiation at the last moment. Thirty-eight Republicans joined them in voting no, demanding to see significant spending cuts before raising the debt ceiling.

The vote on Thursday night left Republican leadership largely without answers. Speaker Johnson spent much of Friday morning meeting with members of the conference and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance to find a new path forward.

After a roughly two-hour, closed-door meeting on Friday, Republicans presented their new strategy.

If the components of the bill are largely the same, what makes Republicans think the third time is the charm? The key difference between today’s planned vote and yesterday’s failed vote is that the new bill excludes a measure to suspend the debt ceiling, according to the office of Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. President-elect Donald Trump had demanded the last-minute component be included in Thursday’s package.

While its exclusion ultimately goes against Trump’s wishes and may anger the incoming administration, it may win over more Democratic supporters. Because the bill will come to the floor in a legislative process called suspension of the rule, the bill will need a supermajority—two-thirds of the chamber—to pass.

Republicans leaving a closed-door meeting on Friday ahead of the chamber’s vote gave mixed opinions about the plan itself while expressing general support for the overall strategy. Republicans leaving the meeting told WORLD they believed Democrats would provide enough support for the deal to pass, now that the debt-ceiling provision has been removed.

Dig deeper: Read my reporting on how U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to pivot after proposing a bill the conference considered unacceptable.