{"id":4981,"date":"2025-09-16T12:36:55","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/16\/government-shutdown-looms-oct-1-as-congress-struggles-with-stopgap-spending-plan-2\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T12:36:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T17:36:55","slug":"government-shutdown-looms-oct-1-as-congress-struggles-with-stopgap-spending-plan-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/16\/government-shutdown-looms-oct-1-as-congress-struggles-with-stopgap-spending-plan-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Government shutdown looms Oct. 1 as Congress struggles with stopgap spending plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.<\/p>\n

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson answers reporters’ questions during a press conference in the Rayburn Room inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. Also pictured, from left to right, are California rancher and former president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Kevin Kester; Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tony Wied; Republican Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn.; and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt\/States Newsroom)<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. House Republican leaders released a seven-week stopgap government funding bill Tuesday that\u2019s intended to avoid a shutdown when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But GOP leaders opted not to negotiate the legislation with Democrats, who may be needed to approve the bill in the House and will be required to get past the Senate\u2019s 60-vote legislative filibuster.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Democrats for weeks have called on Republicans to address what they view as critical health care issues, including the expiration of expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits at the end of the calendar year and the effects of the GOP\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d law on Medicaid recipients.<\/p>\n

Speaker Mike Johnson said during a press conference shortly before the bill was released that he views the ACA tax credits as \u201ca December policy issue, not a September funding issue,\u201d even though open enrollment begins in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t expire until the end of the year and so we have until the end of December to figure all that out,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cBut I can tell you that there\u2019s real concern. I have concerns. Republicans have concerns about those policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at how much they\u2019ve been abused, in my estimation, in some ways. There\u2019s no income cap on it. People who make $600,000 a year get a government subsidy for their health care. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to be a popular measure when people understand how that works. There\u2019s a relatively small number of people that are affected by it. But that policy has real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tax credits are used by people who purchase their own health care coverage through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace.<\/p>\n

Schumer: Republicans \u2018want to shut things down\u2019<\/h4>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech before the bill was publicly released that GOP leaders shouldn\u2019t expect Democrats to help them advance any legislation they didn\u2019t negotiate in a bipartisan way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can try and play the blame game, but their actions tell a different story. Their actions show clearly they want to shut things down because they don\u2019t want to negotiate with Democrats,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s more than that. It means Republicans don\u2019t want to help the American people with the crisis they\u2019ve created raising people\u2019s costs, particularly their health care costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the stopgap spending bill, which would keep the government running through Nov. 21, is needed to give lawmakers more time to work out final, bipartisan versions of the dozen full-year government funding bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal here should be to fund the government the way it was intended to be funded \u2014 through the normal appropriations process,\u201d Thune said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., issued a joint statement shortly after the bill\u2019s release, saying they\u2019re ready to keep working with their Republican counterparts \u2014 House Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Senate Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine \u2014 on a bipartisan stopgap spending bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of continuing to work through important issues with us on the continuing resolution and government funding to help the middle class and the working class, House Republican leadership has walked away from negotiations and are now threatening a shutdown by trying to jam through a funding bill on their terms alone,\u201d DeLauro and Murray wrote.<\/p>\n

Security for members of Congress<\/h4>\n

The\u00a091-page stopgap spending bill<\/a> also includes $30 million in additional funds to bolster safety and security for members of Congress following an increasingly violent year that included the\u00a0killing<\/a> of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, the killing and attempted killing <\/a>of Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota as well as some of their family members and\u00a0arson<\/a> at the Democratic Pennsylvania governor\u2019s mansion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Members of Congress, their staff and their families are subject to thousands of threats each year, according to data from the U.S. Capitol Police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Johnson told reporters shortly after his press conference that he views the member security funding as a start and that there will be \u201cmore to come\u201d in the full-year Legislative Branch funding bill.<\/p>\n

Johnson said he expects the House will vote on the stopgap bill before Friday, when both chambers of Congress are set to leave on a week-long break for the Rosh Hashanah holiday week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lawmakers aren\u2019t expected to return to Capitol Hill until Sept. 29, with just hours to avoid a partial government shutdown if they cannot approve a stopgap bill in the days ahead.<\/p>\n

The legislation includes an additional $30 million for the U.S. Marshals Service, which is responsible for the safety of federal judges and courthouses, as well as $28 million \u201cfor the protection of the Supreme Court Justices.\u201d A\u00a0GOP summary of the bill<\/a> says the Marshals Service funding will go toward \u201cExecutive Branch protective services.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson answers reporters’ questions during a press conference in the Rayburn Room inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. Also pictured, from left to right, are California rancher and former president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association Kevin Kester; Wisconsin Republican Rep. Tony Wied; Republican Whip…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGovernment shutdown looms Oct. 1 as Congress struggles with stopgap spending plan - WestplexNews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/16\/government-shutdown-looms-oct-1-as-congress-struggles-with-stopgap-spending-plan-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Government shutdown looms Oct. 1 as Congress struggles with stopgap spending plan - WestplexNews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson answers reporters’ questions during a press conference in the Rayburn Room inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. 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