The House will vote on the $1.7 trillion omnibus on Friday as lawmakers run out of time to fund the government.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced the vote shortly after the Senate passed the spending bill on Thursday. It will likely narrowly pass in the lower chamber, where Democrats hold a slim majority until the new Congress begins on Jan. 3.
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Hoyer said the omnibus won’t reach the House until almost midnight on Thursday, and the first votes in the lower chamber won’t get underway until after 9 a.m. In the event that the House cannot pass the bill by midnight Friday, when government funding runs out, lawmakers are planning to pass a short-term continuing resolution that will keep funding at current levels until the omnibus vote.
“As soon as we get the documents to process on the floor, we will proceed as quickly as possible,” Hoyer said. “In addition, the Senate has passed and we will pass as well a short-term CR so that the bill can be enrolled and sent to the president for signature. And so, there will be no termination or closing of the government’s operations.”
The Rules Committee will begin reviewing the bill Thursday evening at 5:30 p.m. to get in motion the House procedures necessary to get it to the floor by tomorrow morning. Senate clerks still need a few more hours to process the 4,000-page legislation and will get the entire, Senate-approved version to the House late Thursday.
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The continuing resolution would extend funding until Dec. 30, allowing the House time to process the final bill and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature. Lawmakers will likely try to have everything wrapped by the end of Friday in observance of the Christmas holiday.
Democrats only have a two-seat majority due to several vacant seats. However, all Democrats are expected to support the budget despite most Republicans pledging to oppose it. The thousands of pages and tight time frame in which lawmakers had to pass it caused an outcry among conservatives.
