Johnson to try vote on modified plan B: ‘We will not have a government shutdown’ 

The House on Friday will make another attempt at passing legislation to avert a government shutdown, staging a vote on a revamped spending proposal that excludes the debt limit hike initially demanded by President-elect Trump, three sources told The Hill.

The package would fund the government at current levels through March 14, extend the farm bill by one year and appropriate billions of dollars in disaster aid and assistance for farmers — the same provisions that were in Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) plan B proposal that failed on the House floor Thursday night.

But in a departure from that measure, Friday’s bill will not include language to raise the debt limit after Democrats and a handful of Republicans came out against the provision — despite Trump initially demanding that such language be included.

House GOP leadership plans to bring the package to the floor under the fast-track suspension of the rules process, which bypasses the need to approve a procedural rule but require two-thirds support for passage. It remains unclear whether Democrats will support the package.

The House is expected to vote on the new proposal around 5 p.m. EST, a source told The Hill. Without congressional action, large parts of the federal government would shut down hours later, just after midnight.

Johnson emerged from a tense two-hour meeting with his GOP conference in the Capitol basement to announce the developments and vow there would be no shutdown with less than eight hours to go until the deadline.

“There is a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward,” he told reporters. 

“We will not have a government shutdown,” he continued. “And we will meet our obligations for our farmers who need aid, for the disaster victims all over the country, and for making sure that military and essential services and everyone who relies upon the federal government for a paycheck gets paid over the holidays."

In lieu of dealing with the debt limit in the funding plan, as Trump had wanted, Republicans struck an agreement to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $2.5 trillion in net cuts to spending, done through a reconciliation package, two sources confirmed to The Hill.

The reconciliation process is a special procedure that gets around the Senate filibuster, allowing Republicans who will have trifecta control of government to push through their priorities without needing Democratic support. Republicans have long been planning to use this process to advance an ambitious legislative agenda that includes extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and addressing border security.

It is not clear which programs would be cut. An original version of that spending agreement presented to members targeted mandatory spending cuts, a bucket that includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, but one member said the final agreement removed the word “mandatory.” Congress is not able to use the reconciliation package to change Social Security.

One Republican said that the idea behind the suspension strategy, despite it being unclear whether Democrats will provide the two-thirds support needed for passage, is to jam them into supporting it or else have the government shut down before Republicans pursue another plan.

“I think the idea here is we can vote on this, and then Democrats won't miss their flights this afternoon,” said Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.).

If the bill does not pass, Republicans are likely to advance to a strategy that splits the plan B bill into three buckets: A “clean” continuing resolution through March 14, a disaster aid bill, and legislation that appropriates assistance for farmers.

Because of wonky procedural issues, the House would not be able to take up the three-prong strategy until after midnight — the time when a government shutdown would start.

House Republicans were considering those two options during their closed-door meeting on Friday, two sources told The Hill, during which it became clear that there was “overwhelming consensus” in favor of the single measure brought under the fast-track process.

Updated at 3:02 p.m. EST