Top lawmakers unveil ‘Christmas-tree’ funding bill with $100B for disasters

Congressional leaders released bill text Tuesday night that would fund the federal government into March, hitched to more than $100 billion in disaster aid and a slew of last-ditch policy bills as lawmakers prepare to leave town for the holidays.

Racing to avert a government shutdown Friday night before fleeing the Capitol until January, lawmakers have again turned their year-end funding bill into the proverbial “Christmas tree” measure, ornamented with a variety of unrelated legislation they want to clear in the final days of the current session of Congress. That includes a bill to renew expiring health care programs, a measure to restrict U.S. investments in China and a one-year extension of the annual “farm bill” that sets agriculture and food policy.

Speaker Mike Johnson bristled Tuesday at the classic nickname for Congress’ catch-all December package: “It’s not a Christmas tree.”

The measure is a “small” stopgap funding patch, the speaker added, “that we’ve had to add things to that were out of our control. These were not man-made disasters. These are things that the federal government has an appropriate role to do. So I wish it weren’t necessary. I wish we hadn’t had record hurricanes in the fall.”

Disaster aid under the bill will largely flow to communities recovering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, along with other disasters like wildfires and severe flooding, plus federal aid to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge that collapsed in Baltimore earlier this year. Another $10 billion in economic assistance is included for farmers.

The package also OKs year-round sales of ethanol fuel nationwide, a major victory for Republicans in corn-growing states.

Conservative Republicans in the House are seething over the funding package, escalating discontent within the conference ahead of the January floor vote that will decide if Johnson can remain speaker.

House Democratic leaders, predicting that dozens of GOP lawmakers will vote against passage this week, are issuing a warning to Johnson heading into the new Congress.

“One of the things that we know very clearly is that House Democrats will be needed to pass government funding,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Tuesday. “That has been the case this Congress. It will continue to be the case, even in the next Congress.”

“But this is a lesson for Speaker Johnson,” Jeffries added. “Work with us, let’s find solutions, let’s tune out the most extreme voices in your conference, and let’s find that consensus that will be necessary to fund government.”

That next funding fight will happen in the first two months of the second Trump administration. Under the new stopgap spending bill congressional leaders are trying to clear this week, the next government shutdown deadline will be pushed to March 14, keeping budgets mostly static for the military and federal agencies well into the fiscal year that kicked off in October.

That new deadline will allow the Trump administration to officially weigh in on a final funding deal and is a win for conservative Republicans. House Freedom Caucus members who are hoping to slice government funding have long-favored pushing the deadline close to a late-April trigger for across-the-board cuts.

The March funding deadline is also seen as advantageous to Johnson, since it saves him from having to negotiate a final bipartisan government funding deal — and the ensuing criticism from House conservatives — before the January floor vote to lock in his speakership.