As expected, the House agreed to yesterday by a vote of 245 to 182 the next short-term continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government funded through March 23. The current CR expires Friday morning at midnight. The House-passed CR would fund the Department of Defense for the rest of the year at $30 billion over what the budget cap allows for while keeping the majority of the non-defense discretionary programs funded only through the length of the CR. Senate Democrats, not surprisingly, have rejected the House approach.
One of the biggest reasons why the government has had to function through a series of short-term CRs is because of Congress’ lack of agreement on how much money should be available overall for FY2019. It appears that the two parties and the two chambers might be reaching an understanding on the “top line” for this year and next. While details have not yet been confirmed– with reports in the neighborhood of an increase for both defense and non-defense programs of $300 billion for two years– the Senate could very well strike the defense-only parts of the House-adopted CR and replace them with those that would set the new overall spending levels in its version of the CR.
Regardless of what the Senate does, unless it accepts the exact same legislative package as the House’s, the Senate language would need to return to the House for its consideration and adoption before the end of tomorrow in order to avoid a shutdown.
Still unresolved in all of this is the Dreamers situation. To end the shutdown back in January, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) committed to allowing the Senate to debate possible ways to address Dreamers if no solution was found before the expiration of the current CR.