Just days after lawmakers in the House and Senate announced an agreement on a $1.6 trillion top-line figure to fund the government for 2024 and avert a looming government shutdown, leaders of both parties in the upper chamber on Tuesday floated the possibility that Congress may need to pass a short-term funding measure to keep the government open while the full-year spending accord is finalized.

What You Need To Know

  • Just days after reaching a bipartisan $1.6 trillion funding deal, Senate leaders in both parties indicated may need to pass a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown 

  • In an interview Wednesday with POLITICO, Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., signaled that Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure to give them more time to draft and pass the full-year spending bills

  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his deputy, Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., emphasized that Congress will need to pass a short-term funding measure — known as a Continuing Resolution, or CR — to avoid a government shutdown, expressing doubt that the full-year agreement can come together in time

  • The latest development could set Republicans in the Senate on a collision course with House Speaker Mike Johnson and the House GOP; the Louisiana Republican leader said last year that he is “done with short-term CRs"

In an interview Wednesday with POLITICO, Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., signaled that Congress will need to pass a stopgap funding measure to give them more time to draft and pass the full-year spending bills.

“I do not want to be a pessimist, but I am a realist," Murray told the outlet. "These bills are going to take a lot of work. And we are working as hard as we can, but we have to be realistic. We are not going to get this done in a week."

"This is hard, and it's gonna take some time," she added. "We want to do it right. It doesn't help that we're here in January and just got a top line."

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said Tuesday that it would be “unrealistic” for lawmakers to enact the full-year government funding bill by Jan. 19, the first of two partial shutdown deadlines. He also expressed skepticism it could be passed by Feb. 2, the second shutdown deadline.

“We ought to allow some time to do some work on the other bills,” Thune told reporters on Tuesday, adding that it’s “unrealistic” to pass all 12 individual spending bills by those deadlines.

On Jan. 19, funding for several key agencies and programs, including some food safety and veterans' services, is set to expire; the rest of the government programs would run out of funding on Feb. 2.

Thune also cautioned House Republicans not to flirt with the possibility of a shutdown, warning: “We’ve never seen any political or policy gain come out of a government shutdown.”

Thune’s comments about a short-term funding measure were later echoed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., at a press conference Tuesday. The Kentucky Republican said that “obviously” Congress will need to pass a short-term funding measure — known as a Continuing Resolution, or CR — to avoid a government shutdown.

"The simplest things take a week in the Senate, so I think frequently the House doesn’t understand how long it takes to get something through the Senate,” McConnell said.

He would not comment on how long the length of the CR should be, noting that it’s up to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to figure that out.

Democrats also emphasized the time it will take to pass the full-year spending agreement, with Sen. Murray saying Tuesday that she will be “working around the clock” with her colleagues in the House and Senate to get the bill completed, but added that “negotiating final funding bills is no walk in the park.”

The latest development could set Republicans in the Senate on a collision course with Johnson and the House GOP; the Louisiana Republican leader said last year that he is “done with short-term CRs.”

Johnson and Schumer on Sunday announced that they’ve reached a full-year spending deal, which largely hews to spending caps for defense and domestic programs that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend the debt limit until 2025. But it does provide some concessions to House Republicans, who viewed the spending restrictions in that agreement as insufficient.

In a letter to colleagues Sunday, Johnson said the bill will secure $16 billion in additional spending cuts from the previous agreement brokered by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden and is about $30 billion less than what the Senate was considering. The agreement speeds up the roughly $20 billion in cuts already agreed to for the Internal Revenue Service and rescinds about $6 billion in COVID relief funds that had been approved but not yet spent, according to Johnson's letter.

“This represents the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” Johnson wrote, warning that the deal would "not satisfy everyone.”

The far-right Freedom Caucus, in a post on social media, called the deal "even worse than we thought" and "total failure," signaling that House Speaker Mike Johnson may need to rely on Democratic votes to get the bill over the finish line. At least eight far-right Republicans signaled they would not support the bill. 

When asked about working with Johnson, Schumer offered praise for the Louisiana Republican, calling him “a very decent, respectful guy,” but on the Senate floor earlier Tuesday, he warned House Republicans against bending “to the insatiable whims of their hard-right flank,” which he charged would bring the U.S. closer to a shutdown.

“None of us want to see a government shutdown,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “So we’ll do everything possible to ensure we avoid one in the coming weeks. If Republicans in the House follow the approach we’ve taken in the Senate, the bipartisan approach, where Democrats and Republican appropriators worked collaboratively despite our disagreements, then we can minimize the risks of a shutdown.”

“But if House Republicans bend to the insatiable whims and demands of their hard-right flank, if they corrode the appropriations process with poison pills and extremist policy proposals, then they will be responsible for moving us closer to a shutdown,” he continued. “I hope that does not happen. But we will not be bullied by a few hard-right radicals.”

The agreement is separate from the negotiations that are taking place to secure additional funding for Israel and Ukraine while also curbing restrictions on asylum claims at the U.S. border. Both Senate leaders stressed the importance of passing the international aid on Tuesday.

"This is the most serious international situation we have faced since the Berlin Wall came down,” McConnell said. “We need to pass the supplemental and there needs to be a strong border provision part of it.”

“We're closer now than we have ever been to getting an agreement,” Schumer said. “Congress has not acted on comprehensive immigration reform in decades, so it's not surprise that it's going to take some time."

Biden and Speaker Johnson spoke on the topic of border security on Wednesday, with the Louisiana Republican urging "the President to use his executive authority to secure the southern border," reiterating concerns he expressed in a letter last month. 

The conversation took place after Johnson met with members of his House Republican conference. 

Spectrum News' Joseph Konig and The Associated Press contributed to this report.