The Senate easily passed a spending package on Jan. 30, but the House of Representatives is currently out of town.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that he is confident that the House will end the partial government shutdown that was initiated on Saturday after Congress failed to approve a measure to keep the government funded.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town.”
Johnson appeared to have been referring to transportation problems related to recent winter storms that left areas without power or canceled thousands of flights late last month.
He added that after conversations with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Republicans in the lower congressional chamber have “got to pass a rule and [will] probably do this mostly on our own,” adding that that’s “very unfortunate.”
“After the Senate acted over the weekend, we will now have 11 of 12 separate appropriations bills approved by both chambers,” Johnson added. “Because they modified our package, they sent it over a little differently, which means we’ve got to address the bills again.”
The U.S. government entered a brief shutdown on Saturday after Congress failed to approve a deal to keep a wide swath of operations funded. The Senate easily passed a spending package on Jan. 30, but the House of Representatives is currently out of town.
Johnson, whose party has a razor-thin majority in the House, told NBC on Sunday that the GOP’s intention is to fund all agencies except for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency that runs Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and others, by this Tuesday. When that happens, he added, “then we will have two weeks of good faith negotiations to figure it out.”
Democrats are demanding reforms to ICE, such as requiring mandatory body cameras, and they also want to see the end of roving patrols and ICE agents’ use of face masks. Lawmakers have said they would seek to shut down the government after two protesters were shot in Minneapolis last month while clashing with federal agents.
“I just don’t see how, in good conscience, Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding” after the shootings, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
