House clears spending bill, averting shutdown

What happened

The House on Tuesday passed a Senate-approved stopgap funding bill that will avert a government shutdown at the end of the month. The “lopsided” 370-48 vote punts the expected fiscal 2027 “spending fight until after the midterm elections,” The New York Times said, and allows lawmakers to “quickly return to the campaign trail for the critical final weeks before the elections.”

Who said what

The stopgap measure is “simple by design,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “No poison pills, no divisive wish lists and no political gimmicks.” At a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said the “bill was much improved from the product that passed the House earlier this summer on a mostly party-line basis,” according to The Associated Press. In its bipartisan rewrite, the Senate “made some changes, some that we don’t support,” GOP Whip Steve Scalise (La.) told The Washington Post. But “it’s much more important for the country to avoid a government shutdown.”

What next?

Once President Donald Trump signs the bill, the government will be funded at current levels through Dec. 11. That gives lawmakers time to “find compromise on a full-year measure,” said the AP, which will “likely be quite difficult.”