US House Republicans unveil six-month stopgap bill to avert shutdown

Washington: Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives unveiled their six-month stopgap government funding bill on Saturday to avoid a potential government shutdown on March 14.

The proposal would fund the government through September, the end of the 2025 fiscal year, and mostly maintain levels of spending passed during the last administration.

The House is expected to vote on the 99-page funding bill on Tuesday, Republican leadership staff told reporters on Saturday.

The aides said the funding package - called a continuing resolution because it would maintain funding approved from last year - has been closely coordinated with the White House.

President Donald Trump has also signaled his support as this could clear the way for Republicans in control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress to focus on extending the 2017 tax cuts implemented by Trump in his first term.

The president's support for this stopgap funding plan has encouraged some hardline Republicans who have previously voted against similar stopgap funding bills, a crucial hurdle in the chamber where House Speaker Mike Johnson leads a slim Republican 218-214 majority.

The recently proposed cuts from Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are not included in this latest stopgap funding bill. Johnson has said those cuts can be addressed in next year's government spending negotiations.

Nonetheless, Republican and Democratic appropriation negotiators had been trying to come together in recent weeks to pass the required 12 government spending bills for the 2025 fiscal year, but the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce and ongoing threats to withhold congressionally-appropriated spending have stymied agreement.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Friday said his Democratic caucus could not support a partisan funding plan by Republicans.

“I strongly oppose this full-year continuing resolution, which is a power grab for the White House and further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people," Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic House appropriator said in a statement after the funding bill was released.

"By essentially closing the book on negotiations for full-year funding bills that help the middle class and protect our national security, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have handed their power to an unelected billionaire."

House Republicans, however, insist the funding bill is a "clean" continuing resolution because it contains no supplemental funding. The stopgap funding bill also only applies to discretionary spending and not mandatory spending for Social Security retirement payments and the Medicare and Medicaid government healthcare programs.

The Republicans' proposed bill increases defense spending by about $6 billion while decreasing non-defense spending by about $13 billion, the House Republican leadership aides said.

Some of the proposed increase to defense spending includes an already authorized pay bump for lower-level military personnel and funding for building submarines. Republicans in the U.S. Senate have been pushing for higher levels of defense spending than the current level authorized during former President Joe Biden's term.

The Republican leadership staffers said the House funding proposal includes a request from the Trump administration for additional funding for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which carries out deportations, because the agency is operating at a shortfall.

A $20 billion rescission for the Internal Revenue Service is also carried forward in this funding proposal, as was the case in the stopgap government funding plan that was passed in December.

No congressionally directed spending for lawmaker-requested projects was included in the bill.