With time running short to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week, President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are pitching Republicans on a stopgap bill that would keep federal dollars flowing at current levels through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
The idea is something of a surrender by Republicans, as it would maintain spending at levels enacted under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and does not account for the cuts being made by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. But the president and speaker are embracing it as a way to avoid a politically damaging shutdown fight among Republicans while still affording Mr. Trump wide latitude to slash spending on his own in defiance of Congress.
“I am working with the GREAT House Republicans on a Continuing Resolution to fund the Government until September to give us some needed time to work on our Agenda,” Mr. Trump wrote Wednesday on social media. “Conservatives will love this Bill, because it sets us up to cut Taxes and Spending in Reconciliation, all while effectively FREEZING Spending this year.”
It is unclear whether the plan could pass by midnight on March 14 and avert a shutdown. Mr. Trump’s appeal was aimed at soothing far-right House members who traditionally have opposed government spending bills, particularly stopgap measures that lump together money for every federal program without reducing funding for any of them.
He hosted hard-liners at the White House on Tuesday afternoon and encouraged them to support the extension, and some skeptics emerged saying they were considering doing so. They noted that Mr. Trump had already shown a willingness to ignore spending legislation and pursue deep cuts on his own.
But members of both parties on the appropriations committees in the House and Senate are deeply opposed, arguing that it would starve some departments of needed funding and cede too much power over spending to the executive branch.
“It locks in programs that should be trimmed,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It doesn’t give increases to agencies that need them, like the Department of Defense, and it’s based on the Biden budget. Why would we want to lock in the priorities of the Biden budget?”
Republicans and Democrats on the appropriations panels have been negotiating an agreement that would allow Congress to move forward with individual spending bills for the remainder of the fiscal year, but it would be impossible to get those measures enacted in time to beat the shutdown deadline.
Unlike regular spending bills, temporary extensions do not explicitly direct how the federal funding levels lawmakers set should be allocated. That would give the Trump administration broader discretion over large sums of money at a time when the president has already moved aggressively to block the government from disbursing funds authorized by Congress for a variety of programs.
Ms. Collins said the administration had requested an extra $30 billion for the Pentagon for use as officials there see fit, an approach that would hand much of the responsibility for divvying up the money to the executive branch rather than Congress.
Top Democrats have been urging their members to oppose an extension through September, insisting instead that appropriators continue trying to strike a deal themselves. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said on Thursday that “if Republicans decide to take this approach, as Speaker Johnson indicated, it’s his expectation that Republicans are going it alone.”
“If you are not setting the funding levels, then someone else is,” Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said in an interview. “And the someone else, in this case, is Elon Musk and President Trump.”
Ms. DeLauro said of her Republican colleagues: “What is it that makes them think that they should turn over what we do here to the executive? They’re willing to give it up. I’m not.”
Giving up on individual spending bills would also mean that thousands of pet projects known as earmarks sought by both Republicans and Democrats would fall by the wayside, not to mention wasting huge amounts of work put into assembling the spending measures.
Despite her reservations, Ms. Collins said she would still prefer maintaining existing funding to allowing federal funding to lapse altogether.
“The worst of all worlds is a government shutdown, and that, to me, represents the ultimate failure to govern,” Ms. Collins said. “I don’t want Border Patrol agents and air traffic controllers and T.S.A. personnel being forced to work without pay.”
Whether Republicans in the House adopt that approach is an open question. Conservative lawmakers have traditionally refused to support stopgap measures because they extend current funding levels and lump all government funding into one bill, rather than the 12 stand-alone spending bills that Congress is supposed to pass.
Even after meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House on Wednesday, Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee said he had not decided whether he could support such a measure.
“I’m looking at it,” Mr. Burchett said, adding that his support could hinge on whether the bill was “clean,” free of any policy riders or additional funding.
But others who have traditionally been opposed to temporary funding bills expressed openness to passing one under Mr. Trump because he has acted so aggressively to go around Congress and unilaterally defund programs.
“I want to freeze spending and bad policies,” Representative Chip Roy of Texas said. “I think the president is going to be able to handle a lot of bad policies through impoundment and other tools.”
“Chasing some big appropriations battle next week,” he added, “I don’t see that working out as well as just freezing spending.”
