Johnson and Jeffries kick off funding tango with talk of a holiday punt

Facing a government shutdown cliff in four weeks, the House’s top lawmakers are talking privately about punting the funding deadline for a month or two.

Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries discussed extending government funding into November or December when the two spoke last week, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the private conversation.

President Donald Trump’s fresh declaration that he has unilaterally canceled almost $5 billion in foreign aid only increases the threat of a partisan standoff over government funding in the coming weeks. But so far leaders on Capitol Hill are holding off on ultimatums, even as they preemptively blame the other side for raising the odds of a funding lapse come Oct. 1.

Johnson told reporters Tuesday that he is still building consensus within his GOP ranks about the precise duration of a potential stopgap, while House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said GOP leaders are in the meantime talking with Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) about pursuing a broader government funding deal with Democrats.

“Right now,” Scalise added, “we’re trying to get a bipartisan deal, and I have complete confidence in Chairman Cole and his ability to find willing participants on the other side.”

Whether Johnson or Jeffries first floated the funding punt is up for debate. Two of the people familiar with the call between the two lawmakers last week said Johnson pitched the short-term stopgap to his Democratic counterpart. But the speaker told senior Republicans during a closed-door meeting in his office Tuesday afternoon that Jeffries proposed passing a continuing resolution to keep the government funded, according to a third person.

That distinction matters because many lawmakers are loath to fund the government with another continuing resolution.

One top Republican appropriator, Alabama Rep. Robert Aderholt, is predicting that any stopgap funding patch could span until early November because top lawmakers “don't want to drag it out till Christmas.” Cole, however, told reporters that lawmakers are considering the first three weeks of November for a new funding deadline — perhaps sometime between Nov. 6 and Nov. 20.

He said he’s also holding out hope, however, that leadership will give appropriators the runway to negotiate a bicameral compromise on the House funding bills that are closest in spending levels to the Senate’s versions. That includes the measures the other chamber passed last month to fund the departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, along with congressional operations and military construction.

“The minute they get 60 in the Senate, I lose at least 30 in the House. So I'm going to have to have Democratic friends over here. So I'm committed to sit down and work to try and get us through this,” Cole, who is expected to meet with Johnson and GOP leadership in the coming days, said Tuesday night.

He added that he’s talking to Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine about attaching that trio of bills to a stopgap spending package. That would mean at least some government programs would get funded a full year even if others will have to lurch ahead with less certainty: “We think getting a few bills done early that are not overly large, and tacking on a CR is the way to go.”

But Democrats are questioning why they should cut a funding deal if the administration is going to try to unilaterally undercut parts of an agreement through rescissions requests or other tactics. Democrats are also under pressure from their own base to avoid cutting a deal without concrete wins.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues Tuesday that sought to put the onus on Republicans to work with them to avoid a shutdown. He also stressed that he and Jeffries are unified heading into the fall funding fight, with the latter telling reporters that he has had a “general conversation” with Johnson last week.

Jeffries also made clear he delivered Johnson a stark warning on behalf of fellow Democrats: “We’re not going to support partisan funding legislation, period.”

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.