President Trump will meet Wednesday with a group of House Republicans who are not on board with GOP leaders’ plan for funding the government, in hopes of unifying the party and ensuring Democrats will be blamed if there is a shutdown.
The White House meeting will come just nine days before the March 14 government funding deadline.
GOP leaders in both chambers are working with the Trump administration to draft a stopgap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, that would extend last year’s government funding levels through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2025.
“Let’s get it done!” the president said in a social media post last week endorsing the “clean, temporary government funding bill.”
That will build on two stopgaps the previous Congress passed extending fiscal 2024 funding levels and policies into the current fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, creating an effective year-long CR.
Democratic appropriators have said they oppose a CR for the rest of the fiscal year but would support a shorter-term stopgap to provide more time for negotiations on new fiscal 2025 funding bills. Those negotiations stalled because Democrats demanded language restricting the president from being able to block or shift funding Congress approves, which Republicans rejected as a nonstarter.
A House vote on the CR running through September is tentatively planned for next Tuesday. Republicans are prepared to pass it on their own, said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer.
“We’ll pass it with Republican votes,” Mr. Emmer told The Washington Times. “That’s what we got to do.”
House Republicans have a paper-thin majority in which they can only afford one defection on party-line votes.
Some Republicans have already come out against the CR before it has even been unveiled. Others have raised concerns.
Many would like to see the CR codify at least some of the savings that the new Department of Government Efficiency says it has found in the first two months of the Trump administration.
“Something that signals to the American people, like, that we get it, that would be awesome,” said Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican, who is undecided on how he’ll vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said the measure will not include DOGE savings because lawmakers “don’t have time to calculate” it all ahead of next week’s deadline.
“A clean CR allows us to avoid a government shutdown, which isn’t good for anyone, while the DOGE effort continues,” he said. “It’s really critical work finding fraud, waste misuse throughout the government. So what the DOGE effort will do is prepare recommendations for FY 2026. We have to get FY 2025 done.”
At least two Republicans, Reps. Tony Gonzales of Texas and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have posted about their opposition to the CR on social media even as it is still being drafted.
“I am a NO on the CR,” Mr. Gonzales said. “Congress needs to do its job and pass a conservative budget! CR’s are code for Continued Rubberstamp of fraud, waste, and abuse.”
Mr. Massie disagrees with the decision to defer action on codifying the DOGE cuts, saying, “We should not fund the waste, fraud, and abuse.”
He accused GOP leaders of violating a promise that extending funding to March 14 would allow Republicans to use the power of the purse to enact aspects of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Mr. Massie also is frustrated that GOP leaders plan to ignore a provision he helped secure in the 2023 debt limit law to implement a 1% across-the-board cut in discretionary funding if Congress did not pass full-year appropriations bills by April.
House GOP and White House lawyers have determined that the CR through September counts as full-year funding and that the cuts will not be triggered, according to House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, Oklahoma Republican.
Rep. Tim Burchett, one of a handful of Republicans who has never supported a stopgap, told The Times that he plans to attend the meeting with the president but for now he is a “no” on the CR.
He wants to see a serious plan from Mr. Trump on spending reductions, and emphasized that including some or all of the DOGE cuts could move him closer to a “yes.”
“It could push me in that direction if we saw some serious cuts that were codified,” said Mr. Burchett, Tennessee Republican.
Another Republican who will attend the White House meeting, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, said he normally doesn’t like funding extensions but would support this one to prevent any hindrance to the president’s momentum.
He said Republicans need to be united against Democrats’ effort to restrict Mr. Trump and DOGE from meddling with congressionally appropriated funds and prevent a shutdown.
“I see no alternative, if you look at the downside, it’s far greater than not passing anything,” Mr. Norman said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, likewise said he will support the CR, noting it would save money over a bipartisan funding deal that would likely increase spending. Still, he would prefer to see “at least one really egregious thing that [Elon] Musk has identified” codified.
“We live in the DOGE world now,” Mr. Jordan said.
Mr. Johnson suggested the White House could request “rescissions” cutting fiscal 2025 funding for programs that DOGE has found to be wasteful or abusive, while lawmakers work on codifying the majority of savings in the fiscal 2026 spending bills that will need to be passed by Sept. 30.
“We will not be funding fraud, waste, abuse that’s already been discovered,” he said. “As soon as that is qualified and quantified, it will be codified — in that sequence.”
While Republicans are planning to have the votes on their side of the aisle for the CR, they’re also betting Democrats’ threats won’t translate into universal opposition.
House Majority Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, questioned why Democrats would want a government shutdown, predicted, “They don’t.”
Democratic leaders have been coy about their plans, but have said it is Republicans as the majority party who have the votes to keep the government open.
“Democrats do not have the ability to shut down [the] government,” said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar of California.
Even if Republicans can pass a CR through the House without Democratic support, they will need the other party’s support in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Republicans have not engaged in discussions with him or fellow New York Democrat, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“So we have to wait and see what the plan is,” he said. “We believe, we’ve always believed, the only solution is a bipartisan solution.”
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Republicans walked away from the negotiating table on the full-year funding bills after deciding to pass an effective year-long CR that would “give Trump and Musk exactly what they want — fewer restraints and more power over federal spending, so they can pick winners and losers as they see fit.”
“I’m ready to pass a short-term CR immediately to take down the risk of a shutdown so that we can finish our negotiations,” she said.
Ms. Murray said Democrats are still demanding language in the appropriations bills to provide more restraint so that the president and DOGE can’t disregard the law and dismantle programs Congress wants to fund.
Mr. Cole said the assertion that Republicans walked away from the negotiating table is “not true.” He said they warned Democrats from Day 1 of the talks that the language they wanted to restrict the president wouldn’t fly, so the failure to get a deal by the deadline is not the GOP’s fault.
With the CR through September, appropriators can still negotiate full-year bills to potentially supplant the flat funding but without the threat of a shutdown hanging over their heads, Mr. Cole said.
He rejected Democrats’ push for a short-term stopgap, saying he agrees with the speaker who told him he did not want a situation where Congress had to pass another CR every two weeks and couldn’t get any other work done.
