House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has promised his Republican colleagues they will not advance an omnibus spending bill at the end of this year, vowing to break the cycle of passing a massive spending proposal right before Christmas to avoid a government shutdown.
The House is set to vote on a three-month continuing resolution this week to extend government funding levels until Dec. 20, much to the dismay of hard-line Republicans who oppose advancing any sort of stopgap spending deal. In return, Johnson is promising his right flank that the CR is only temporary, noting the only spending bills he wants to pass for the remainder of the year are the 12 individual appropriations bills.
“I have no intention of going back to the terrible traditions, so there won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “Somebody asked me in the hallway a little while ago, ‘Will there be minibuses?’ We don’t want any buses. We’re not going to do any buses. We’ll deal with that in the lame duck.”
Johnson’s comments refer to how Congress typically passes its budget each year, which begins with a temporary CR at the end of September and then the deadline gets punted until right before Christmas. Lawmakers then work until the eleventh hour to finalize their 12 appropriations bills, typically combining them into one massive omnibus bill that contains thousands of pages of provisions.
Republicans have long lamented this process, arguing it is used to push through additional spending because lawmakers don’t have enough time to read through the spending legislation before it’s called for a vote.
“They wanted to play this Christmas Eve omni game that they used to play: having an omnibus drop on Christmas Eve and nobody’s read the bill and it just gets voted on,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said. “We said no to that last year, and Mike Johnson, as speaker, is saying no to that again this year.”
Shortly after Republicans took the House majority in 2023, GOP leaders vowed to no longer rely on omnibus packages and instead said they would pass all 12 of the annual appropriations bills separately.
However, that process fell apart last year when the House was forced to combine those into two so-called “minibus” packages that contained six appropriations bills each. Those were ultimately finalized in March, six months into the fiscal year.
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Now House GOP leaders are calling on the Senate to engage in negotiations ahead of the Dec. 20 deadline, placing blame on the upper chamber for failing to pass any of its individual appropriations bills.
“The Senate has passed zero, not a single bill out of the Senate,” Scalise said. “And so how do you have a negotiation when one side refuses to do their job? And so we’re going to continue to at least do our job.”