The deadline for the government shutdown is a week from today and House Republicans have just announced a two step continuing resolution to keep the government funded.
Speaker Johnson is calling it a ‘two step CR’ instead of a ‘laddered CR’, which you’ll see elsewhere:
NEWS: Speaker Johnson pitching a “two step CR,” using that wording vs, “laddered,” per two sources familiar with House GoP call happening now
He said along lines of: “I’ve been on the job for 3 weeks, I’m not the architect of the mess we are in”
— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) November 11, 2023
Here’s the details:
1) House Republicans announce a “laddered” CR to try to avoid a government shutdown next week
This is a multi-step approach.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) November 11, 2023
2) All funding from the old stopgap bill is renewed automatically since there isn’t enough time to go to conference with the Senate before the deadline early next Saturday morning.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) November 11, 2023
3) So the plan would be go to the first step of the ladder through January 19. This would fund transportation/housing, defense, agriculture and military construction in January. The other eight spending bills would face a deadline of February 2.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) November 11, 2023
This might help in understanding what’s going on via this weird jargon:
A laddered CR is when you separate out different components of the full discretionary budget and pass them individually. In this case there will be two. Each will expire at a different date. A non-laddered CR would be the full thing.
— Will Burger (@willyburgs) November 11, 2023
NBC News explains it this way: “Under the two-step strategy…several spending bills needed to keep the government open would catch a ride on a short-term bill until January 19, while the remaining bills would go on a CR until February 2.”
I think the long and short of it is that Speaker Johnson ultimately wants to pass the appropriate spending bills to fund everything instead of doing continuing resolutions. And this maneuver hopefully gets us to that point.