Congress set to approve another short-term extension to avoid shutdown and keep agencies running
Congress is on course to pass another short-term spending measure that would keep one set of federal agencies operating through March 8 and another set through March 22
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is on course Thursday to pass another short-term spending measure that would keep one set of federal agencies operating through March 8 and another set through March 22, avoiding a shutdown for parts of the federal government that would otherwise kick in Saturday.
The short-term extension is the fourth in recent months, and many lawmakers expect it to be the last for the current fiscal year, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said that negotiators had completed six of the annual spending bills that fund federal agencies and had “almost final agreement on the others.”
“We'll get the job done,” Johnson said as he exited a closed-door meeting with Republican colleagues.
At the end of the process, now expected to extend into late March, Congress is set to approve more than $1.6 trillion in spending for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 — roughly in line with the previous fiscal year. That's the amount that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated with the White House last year before eight disgruntled Republican lawmakers joined with Democrats a few months later and voted to oust him from the position.
