How will Congress handle government funding? Johnson says it depends on Trump’s ‘preference’

How Congress will eventually choose to handle the December government shutdown deadline is largely up to President-elect Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday.

The speaker said he “can make a case for a number of different options that are on the table” for keeping cash flowing to federal agencies beyond the Dec. 20 deadline. The two obvious choices: Punting the deadline into Trump’s second term, or striking a full bipartisan agreement that lasts through next September, when the current fiscal year ends.

“Again, this is a consensus-building exercise, as always,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning. “The president’s preference on that will carry a lot of weight obviously.”

“I just have not had the opportunity, with everything else going on, to talk about that in detail yet,” the speaker added, a day before House Republicans are scheduled to hold leadership elections.

Republicans already faced this decision when Trump was elected in 2016 alongside GOP Hill majorities. Looking back, many congressional Republicans say it was a mistake to further complicate the early months of Trump’s first presidency, adding he wasn’t able to greatly influence the final agreement anyway.

This year, the Republican strategy could be more complicated than choosing between a stopgap or starting negotiations with Democrats to wrap up a funding agreement for the current fiscal year.

Johnson has been keen on adding a new spin to the funding cycle over the last year. That includes the “laddered” approach he successfully enacted at the behest of House conservatives last fall after winning the speakership following Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. That bill set rolling deadlines that funded some of the federal government until an earlier deadline than the military and some of the largest non-defense agencies.

The onus on Congress to clear a disaster aid package before year’s end is also expected to factor into the funding debate. The White House is still finalizing a new emergency supplemental request, anticipated to total at least $100 billion, to cover the cost of recovery from hurricanes Helene and Milton this fall.

The White House’s disaster aid request is also expected to include funding for other major disasters that have struck since the Biden administration sent the last aid request, which went unfulfilled like its prior request for Congress to clear billions of dollars in disaster assistance.