House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told reporters Tuesday that he plans to bring the basic funding bill, known as a continuation solution, to the House of Representatives. House to vote as soon as Wednesday.
“I hope to make a decision to resume as early as tomorrow to keep the government funded,” Hoyer said during his weekly meeting with reporters.
Republicans and Democrats have worked in recent days to negotiate how long the funding extension will last – and as of Tuesday night had not publicly announced the final backstop.
Hoyer blamed the Senate for the delay, saying later in the day, “We’re waiting for the Senate to decide on a date they can agree, which is ridiculous.”
“The government will shut down for 72 hours and they can’t act together,” he said.
But so far, bipartisanship is confident that there won’t be any major issues with funding renewals and that a weekend shutdown won’t happen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted Tuesday that the government will not shut down.
“We’re not going to shut down,” McConnell told reporters, adding that Republicans were still engaged in discussions about how to structure a stopgap funding measure to prevent outages.
“I think we’ll get there and certainly no one has to worry about the government shutdown,” he said.
“First, let me assure everyone, the government will not default, because that has never happened. Second, the majority leader and I discussed the way forward,” he said. .
