Fiscal disaster scenario during shutdown sends GOP scrambling for new spending plan

Congress is running out of time to avert another fiscal crisis in the middle of the current government shutdown standoff — and it’s leaving Republicans with few options other than to try to extend federal spending levels that existed under former President Joe Biden.

But the debate over how long to extend those levels is already dividing Republican lawmakers, making for a potentially messy fight on the horizon even before the current fiscal standoff ends.

Asked if Republicans would need to consider another extension of the most recent federal spending levels — which have been mostly unchanged since fiscal year (FY) 2024, the last year President Joe Biden was in office — House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., told Fox News Digital, "I think we’ll have to, having wasted this much time."

It has been roughly a year and a half since Congress fulfilled its duty of passing a yearly federal budget, and decades since it has been done via 12 single-subject appropriations bills — a goal prized by Republican lawmakers.

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"What would it be, the third year of Biden's last budget?" House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, quipped to reporters Wednesday.

GOP-controlled Washington had hoped to pass a conservative budget for FY 2026. To do that, Republicans are pushing an extension of current federal funding levels through Nov. 21, called a continuing resolution (CR), aimed at giving lawmakers more time to strike a longer-term deal.

But that bill has been stalled in the Senate since Sept. 19. Democrats are demanding any spending deal be paired with an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of this year, a request that has been rejected by Republican leaders.

"We put the date in there weeks ago when we passed a bill over a month ago out of the House, because that is what Republican and Democrat appropriators had agreed to," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. "Well, Democrats have eaten up most of that time. And so we know at some point we'll need a later date, and we don't want it to be jammed up against a holiday."

Two House GOP sources told Fox News Digital that multiple options have emerged, including another CR extending into January and a measure that could last the entire fiscal year until next Sept. 30.

Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and their allies are pushing for the latter option, believing it to be the best course to keep federal spending levels low. The alternative, a bipartisan deal, would need Democrat support in the Senate and consequently see spending levels rise.

"If we can have a long-term CR, so we have guaranteed funding at current levels when we've got Donald Trump and [Office of Management Budget Director] Russ Vought and the strong leadership over the executive branch using taxpayer funds wisely, then that's a good position to be in," House Freedom Caucus Policy Chair Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital.

A source close to the House Freedom Caucus told Fox News Digital that its chairman, Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., would even support a CR until December 2026, though with the caveat that he would need to see what the actual details were. 

That would delay another shutdown fight until after the midterm elections. And the source said Harris believed it would keep threats off of essential workers and military pay for over a year.

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But Cole said House appropriators would favor an extension into January.

"I think there's actually, amongst the appropriators, a heightened sense of urgency because we don't want a yearlong continuing resolution," he said. "That's not a good thing to happen … I talk to my Democratic counterparts, I know that's not what they want to do."

Meanwhile, in the upper chamber, where Senate Democrats rejected the Nov. 21 CR nearly a dozen times, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., suggested a lengthy new measure could be inevitable.

"Clearly now, with the clock having lost several weeks now on the CR, we're getting farther and farther into the season where we're going to have to at least do an extension, if not something on a much longer term basis, to fund the government," Thune told reporters.

Other Republican senators signaled another extension was inevitable as well.

"I would like to see it extended into January, February. I think at the end of the day we spend less money [with a] CR. And again, that's my bigger purpose here," Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said.

But Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters, "I'm fine with a year-long CR. I'm fine with it. I mean the original CR was to take us to Nov. 21 and that’s only a few weeks away. This shutdown could last until then."