GOP bill to keep government open passes — despite Democrats voting against it in droves

The House of Representatives approved a seven-week funding measure on Friday over the objections of Democrats who voted nearly unanimously to shut down the government.

Lawmakers voted 217 to 212 to pass House Republicans’ stopgap funding plan, known as a continuing resolution (CR), with just one Democrat, Maine Rep. Jared Golden, supporting the measure. The House-passed bill now heads to the upper chamber where it is expected to be rejected by Senate Democrats, who are vowing to oppose any funding measure that does not include a partisan wish list of left-wing priorities.

House Republicans’ CR would temporarily fund government operations through Nov. 21, granting congressional appropriators additional time to strike a deal on government funding for the remainder of fiscal year 2026. The short-term CR would also provide for $88 million in security funding across the three branches of government amid rising fears among public officials of their safety following Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

The successful passage of House GOP leadership’s CR comes as President Donald Trump publicly lobbied the Republican conference to unanimously support the spending measure.

“Every House Republican should UNIFY, and VOTE YES!” the president wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Trump’s chief antagonist in the House GOP conference, opposed the spending measure. Speaker Mike Johnson could afford to lose just two GOP votes given House Republicans’ slim majority.

“This CR would be a copy of the uniparty spending bill under Autopen Biden,” Massie, a vocal deficit hawk who frequently votes against GOP spending bills, wrote on the social media platform X on Monday. “I didn’t vote for those spending priorities when Biden was President and I won’t vote for them now.”

Republican Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz also voted “no” on the Trump-backed spending measure.

House Democrats, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, rejected the clean funding measure to avert a government shutdown by citing its failure to include healthcare reforms, such as an extension of Biden-era Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the year’s end. Republicans have countered that the stopgap plan should be focused on funding the government and lawmakers can debate changes to healthcare policy later in the year.

“House Democrats will not support a partisan Republican spending bill that rips healthcare away from the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the House floor on Sept. 11.

The funding measure, which extends government funding at current levels, does not touch healthcare. Rather, Democratic lawmakers have centered their attacks around what’s not in the bill, rather than the provisions within the funding measure.

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