House OKs plan to avoid government shutdown with Wisconsin's Tiffany and Gallagher voting against

WASHINGTON – Nearly every Wisconsin House member on Tuesday helped push through legislation to temporarily extend federal funding and avert a government shutdown despite opposition from a block of Republicans clamoring for spending cuts and conservative policy provisions.

The two-step plan from new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, which would fund some federal agencies at current levels until mid-January and others into February, ultimately passed the House on a 336-95 vote after 209 Democrats provided the necessary support to advance it.

Wisconsin Reps. Tom Tiffany and Mike Gallagher were among 93 Republicans who opposed the bill.

The Senate is expected to take up the stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution or a C.R., in the coming days. Congress must extend current government funding before it expires at midnight Friday, forcing a shutdown.

"It just continues the status quo," Tiffany told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shortly before he voted against the bill. "You gotta at least start going in the right direction with some reductions in spending."

Gallagher, for his part, compared Congress' use of continuing resolutions to the movie Groundhog Day. "Just like the movie, at the current rate, Congress is on track to wake up on Feb. 2 and find itself in a similar predicament to the one it's in today: no closer to a fully funded government and no closer to fixing our broken appropriations process," he said.

Under the legislation, veterans’ and military construction programs, agriculture, transportation, housing, and energy and water development programs would be funded through Jan. 19, and defense and all other federal programs would be funded through Feb. 2. It does not include any aid packages to embattled allies Israel or Ukraine — deferring those packages for a separate fight.

The measure also extends through the next fiscal year programs and provisions in the Farm Bill, last passed in 2018, ensuring those provisions will remain in place through next September.

House GOP leadership this week touted the package as a step toward reforming "how Washington works."

Johnson, elected speaker less than three weeks ago, noted the continuing resolution would avoid the typical end-of-year omnibus package in which all 12 government spending bills are included in a single thousand-plus page measure. He suggested separating the C.R. from aid packages would allow Congress to give more scrutiny to future supplementals.

“Separating out the CR from the supplemental funding debates places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border," Johnson wrote on X Saturday. "With our debt spiraling out of control, the rising costs of ‘Bidenomics’ hurting families, and our Southern border wide open, House Republicans must position ourselves best to fight for the American people."

Still, a significant number of Republicans rejected the move.

Before the vote, the right-wing House Freedom Caucus put out a statement opposing the continuing resolution and labeled the plan as "rolling over today to fight tomorrow."

"The House Freedom Caucus opposes the proposed 'clean' Continuing Resolution as it contains no spending reductions, no border security, and not a single meaningful win for the American People," the group said.

Tiffany, a member of the Freedom Caucus, told the Journal Sentinel he would have also liked to see "policy wins" tied to the measure. He floated the idea of work requirements for assistance programs and called the border the biggest issue that Congress needs to address.

And Gallagher noted the House passed a continuing resolution in September to give Congress 45 days to pass government spending bills. The House, however, was paralyzed for most of that time as Republicans struggled to elect a speaker after ousting California Republican Kevin McCarthy.

"We wasted them," Gallagher said of the previous 45 days. "Unless we take steps to pass the bipartisan Preventing Government Shutdowns Act and reform the appropriations process by implementing biennial budgeting and consolidating committee jurisdiction, we'll only continue to repeat the same fiscal failures."

Wisconsin's five other House Republicans, however, voted in-line with their leadership.

"Speaker Johnson made an impassioned plea to vote for the C.R., and none of the people who are going to vote against it can explain how they are going to extradite themselves from a government shutdown if it doesn't pass," Rep. Glenn Grothman of Glenbeulah told the Journal Sentinel before the vote.

"People who vote against it are showing a real lack of respect for the speaker," he added of Johnson's first major piece of legislation.

Grothman said "it'd be nice" if southern border security policies were tied to the measure but noted Republicans plan to attach those to any Ukraine supplemental. "You want to fight when you have leverage," he said. "Not when you don't have leverage."

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald before the vote said he had reservations over the "bifurcated approach" but said a yes on the legislation was necessary to avoid a shutdown and support the new speaker.

Wisconsin Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore voted for the measure after House Democratic leaders endorsed the bill.

Pocan called splitting the extensions of funding bills into two timeframes "goofy" because "it just gives us one more chance to screw something up, which we've been prettyy good at this year." But he said the measure satisfied Democrats by temporarily maintaining 2023 funding levels and being free of Republican policy riders.

Moore, who represents Milwaukee, in a statement after the vote derided Republicans for the chaos of the last few months and lamented the House was ot able to work earlier to find a long-term, bipartisan solution.

But she added: "This legislation ensures that the American people who rely on critical government services can continue to receive them, while ensuring that millions of dedicated federal workers and our selfless military service members are paid."

The measure now goes to the Senate, where the chamber's leaders have signaled support for it. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was "pleased" the House GOP stopgap bill didn't include "highly partisan cuts that Democrats have warned against."

"The Speaker's proposal is far from perfect," Schumer said. "But the most important thing is that it refrains from making steep cuts while also extending funding for defense in the second tranche of bills in February, not the first in January."

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin signaled she might support the measure, saying she is "open to all options that will ensure we avoid a needless government shutdown that would crush our economy and threaten Wisconsinites' safety."

And Ron Johnson, the state's Republican senator who has been a vocal supporter of the new speaker, threw his support behind the plan over the weekend and urged his colleagues to do the same.

"Speaker Johnson did not create the mess we are in," he said, "but is acting responsibly to avoid a shutdown and put an end to the finely-honed process that has mortgaged our children’s future."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: House approves temporary plan to avoid government shutdown