House vote imminent on plan to avert government shutdown

House lawmakers are set to soon vote on a bill to avert a partial government shutdown after a similar measure backed by President-elect Trump failed on Thursday.

Congress is scrambling for a path forward as the clock ticks closer to the federal funding deadline, with a partial shutdown expected just after midnight Saturday if no action is taken.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., suggested there would be a House-wide vote Friday when leaving a closed-door House GOP meeting where leaders presented their plan.

"I expect that we will be proceeding forward," Johnson said. "We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations for our farmers who need aid, for the disaster victims all over the country, and for making sure that military and essential services, and everyone who relies upon the federal government for a paycheck is paid over the holidays."

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Meanwhile, the national debt has climbed past $36 trillion and the deficit is over $1.8 trillion.

Multiple lawmakers told Fox News Digital that the forthcoming legislation would extend current government funding levels through mid-March – a measure known as a continuing resolution (CR) – paired with just over $100 billion in disaster relief aid for victims of storms Helene and Milton, as well as assistance for the agriculture industry.

Johnson's aim is to bypass regular House procedures to get the legislation straight to a chamber-wide vote, a maneuver known as "suspension of the rules."

In exchange for the fast track, however, the threshold for passage is raised from a simple majority to two-thirds of the House chamber – meaning Democratic support is critical.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told reporters that he believed Johnson struck an agreement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. A longtime Johnson critic, Massie said he would not vote for the bill.

"Trump wanted a debt limit increase, and now we're bringing the exact same bill to the floor without the debt limit increase," Massie said.

Another Republican lawmaker argued that Johnson would not move forward without Trump's blessing.

"We wouldn't do it if they weren't," Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., said when asked if Trump and Elon Musk approved of the deal.

Trump and Musk led the conservative rebellion against the initial plan to avert a partial shutdown, a bipartisan deal that came from negotiations between the top two Democrats and Republicans in both Congressional chambers.

That bill, 1,547 pages, would have extended current government funding levels until March 14. However, GOP hardliners were angered by what they saw as unrelated measures latched onto the bill — like a pay raise for congressional lawmakers, health care policy provisions and legislation aimed at revitalizing RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.

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It was scrapped as Trump and Musk threatened to force any lawmaker who did not support pairing a CR with action on the debt limit out of office.

The debt limit is currently suspended until January 2025 through a prior bipartisan deal, but Trump had pushed for Republicans to act on it now to avoid a messy, protracted fight early in his term.

The second iteration of the funding deal was much slimmer, coming in at 116 pages. It excluded the stadium bill and the congressional pay raise, but still included measures to fund the rebuilding of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge and disaster aid funding. It also suspended the debt limit through January 2027.

A House vote on the second plan went down in flames, however, after 38 Republicans opposed to raising or suspending the debt limit voted with all but two Democrats to defeat the bill.

Johnson huddled with those holdouts on Friday morning, along with Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Russell Vought and Vice President-elect JD Vance. 

The latest plan that's expected to get a vote does not act on the debt limit, but Johnson pledged in that closed-door meeting to raise the debt limit early next year as part of Republicans' plans for a massive policy and spending overhaul.

During their closed-door meeting on Friday, House GOP leaders unveiled their CR plan as well as a plan to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, followed by $2.5 trillion in net spending cuts, multiple people told Fox News Digital.

It's still not clear if the bill will sway all the 38 holdouts, however. Many had advocated for a plan to separate the CR from disaster relief and agricultural aid to vote on "single-subject" bills.

But with a partial government shutdown looming just hours away, it appeared House leaders were running out of time to get that done by the end of Friday.