The House passed a stopgap spending bill Tuesday that keeps the federal government funded at current levels through December 4 — past the September 30 deadline and safely past the November midterms — and nobody in Washington is pretending it includes a single dime of cuts. The vote was 220-205, largely along party lines, with six Democrats in swing districts crossing over and Rep. Thomas Massie standing as the lone Republican to vote no.
The continuing resolution, or CR, is the Capitol's favorite trick: skip the hard work of passing 12 actual appropriations bills, freeze spending where it is, and call it governance. The constitution tasks Congress with authorizing spending through those 12 bills. The House has passed three. The Senate has passed zero — none have even made it through committee, according to The Guardian. So instead of doing the job, leadership rammed through a band-aid that locks in every dollar of current spending and adds more down the line.
Speaker Mike Johnson called it a
