Lawmakers left Washington Thursday with a few more government funding bills under their belts but face a rush after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to avert another partial government shutdown and respond to developments abroad.
Particularly challenging for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., will be to push through the fiscal 2026 Homeland Security spending bill, which hit a snag following the fatal shooting by an immigration officer of an unarmed woman in Minneapolis last week.
Thune acknowledged Thursday the Homeland Security measure would be the most difficult, adding they may have to tackle the department’s funding through a continuing resolution.
House holdouts
The week started off with an easy Republican victory in the House: passage of two bills to relaunch African and Haitian trade programs. But things went downhill for GOP leaders. Johnson saw an embarrassing defeat Tuesday night as six GOP lawmakers sunk a worker education bill and indicated they would oppose other labor measures scheduled for votes.
Johnson pulled the other bills minutes before their votes, which left the House to consider a measure to codify the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back energy efficiency requirements for showerheads. It passed 226-197.
But the setback on the other bills highlighted the tension between leadership’s agenda and their razor-thin majority. Johnson, for his part, brushed off the snafu as a whip count issue.
“We’re totally in control of the House,” he said after the Tuesday night votes. “This is a team that is very united right now, and everyone has different preferences and issues on bills, that’s nothing new. But when you have a one-vote margin, it’s dicey some days.”
The balance of the week was easier on leadership.
The House passed on Wednesday a $76.6 billion package of two more fiscal 2026 government funding bills — Financial Services and National Security-State — in a 341-79 vote. It marked the second time this month the chamber passed a slate of spending bills as Congress nears the Jan. 30 funding deadline.
Johnson said Thursday he still intends to pass a Homeland Security funding bill as well as the three remaining, more controversial appropriations measures — Defense, Labor-HHS-Education and Transportation-HUD.
The House is under increased pressure next week to deal with remaining spending bills, as they are scheduled to be out the last week of January, when the funding deadline expires. Appropriators are planning to release deals on the four measures over the holiday weekend.
Off the floor, the House Administration Committee advanced a leadership-backed bill to ban members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children from buying new individual stocks. The bill advanced despite opposition from Democrats, who argue it doesn’t go far enough to prevent members of Congress from insider trading.
Senate punts on war power
Senators left for a weeklong recess next after grappling with how to respond to Trump administration actions in Venezuela. They also laid some groundwork for addressing appropriations before the end of the month.
GOP leaders scored a victory on Wednesday after they effectively scuttled debate on a measure aimed at preventing more military action against Venezuela. In a vote of 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie, the Senate backed a procedural gambit aimed at thwarting the proposal.
Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana, who previously voted in support of advancing the measure, flipped their votes to help seal the GOP victory. The joint resolution would have forced President Donald Trump to secure authorization from Congress before taking more military action in Venezuela.
“We secured some valuable reassurances and deliverables,” Young told reporters following the vote, including a possible appearance by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Before departing for the week, the Senate also passed bipartisan legislation that would allow individuals to sue over nonconsensual intimate depictions of them that were generated by artificial intelligence.
With the chamber out next week, senators are expected to take part in international delegations. A bipartisan group is traveling to Denmark amid Trump’s ongoing threats to take over Greenland.
But when senators return to the Capitol, they will have just days to work out a final deal on outstanding fiscal 2026 appropriations.
The Senate has passed six of 12 funding bills after successfully pushing through a package containing the Commerce-Justice-Science, Interior-Environment, Energy-Water bill in an 82-15 vote on Thursday. Senate leaders anticipate taking up the House-passed package that consists of the Financial Services and National Security-State spending bills when they return.
A bipartisan group of senators has also been working behind the scenes to find a compromise to address the expired Affordable Care Act tax credits but have run into hurdles. Some of the disagreements are related to the Hyde Amendment and abortion, a particularly thorny topic in a midterm election year.
Rebecca Kheel and John M. Donnelly contributed to this report.
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