Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the House will vote on a government funding bill on Friday morning.
“We’re expecting votes this morning. So y’all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan,” he said.
Asked if they had reached a new agreement, he added: “We’ll see.” While no decision has been made, multiple members say there are discussions about passing a short-term stopgap that would only punt funding into mid-January. That would avert a shutdown and allow lawmakers to go home for the holidays, though they’d return to the same problems in the new year.
The discussions around a short-term funding patch option include moving a separate disaster aid package, similar if not the exact same, as the $110 billion one Republicans negotiated with Democrats in the original stopgap agreement, according to two Republicans.
But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told a gaggle of reporters outside of the speaker’s office that the bill they plan to put forth would likely be similar to the Donald Trump-backed version that failed on the House floor by a wide margin Thursday evening. She said the vote was planned for 10 a.m.
“I think we’re very close to a deal,” she said, adding that it’s “very close to President Trump’s plan yesterday.”
Johnson and House conservatives are huddling in his office Friday morning as a government shutdown deadline looms in less than 24 hours. Separately, House Democrats are scheduled to have a closed-door meeting later in the morning as they wait to see what happens next.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
