Congressional leaders on Tuesday unveiled legislation that would keep government funding flowing through the middle of March and provide nearly $100 billion in aid for communities ravaged by hurricanes and other disasters.
Negotiators in both parties had been toiling to reach a deal ahead of a Friday deadline to avert a shutdown. The sprawling bill, more than 1,500 pages, includes $10 billion in direct economic assistance for farmers and another $21 billion in disaster relief for farmers. It would keep government funding at current levels, and would punt another funding fight until March 14, when the Republican-controlled Congress will have to come to another spending agreement.
It is also stuffed with an array of unrelated policy measures on health, energy, digital privacy and other matters that lawmakers quietly agreed to slip in as part of a final round of haggling in the last days of the Congress, powered by billions in federal money and a collective desire to clear the legislative decks before the new year.
The result was that even before leaders unveiled the legislation on Tuesday, it appeared that Speaker Mike Johnson could face mass defections from his members. A number of House Republicans, including some mainstream conservatives, said that they would not support the deal because it crammed too many policies into one massive bill.
Mr. Johnson made his case for the legislation to lawmakers, arguing that Congress was dutybound to respond to what he called “acts of God,” including the pair of hurricanes that battered the Southeast this fall and the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in March.
“It was intended to be, and it was, until recent days, a very simple, very clean C.R., stopgap funding measure to get us into next year when we have unified government,” he said at a news conference, using the shorthand for a continuing resolution to keep federal funding flowing. “We had these massive hurricanes in the late fall, Helene and Milton, and other disasters. We have to make sure that the Americans that were devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need.”
The seeming torrent of Republicans prepared to oppose the measure indicated that Mr. Johnson would probably have to turn to Democrats to push it through the House, a maneuver he has resorted to repeatedly to bring must-pass legislation across the finish line. That involves bringing up the measure using a special procedure that limits debate, bars any changes and requires the support of two-thirds of those voting to pass.
The deal comes at a particularly fraught time for Mr. Johnson. He is seeking re-election as speaker on Jan. 3, and can afford only a few defections on the House floor, where he must secure a majority to keep his gavel. Mr. Johnson earlier this fall appeared to be in good standing with his conference after receiving a warm endorsement from President-elect Donald J. Trump.
But conservatives said they were enraged by the legislation. They have long decried what has become an annual practice in Congress of leaders unveiling huge spending bills just days before lawmakers are set to leave Washington, essentially forcing them to either swallow legislation they do not like or be responsible for a shutdown just before the holidays.
So it was no surprise that Mr. Johnson faced a round of sniping from annoyed lawmakers on Tuesday morning as he tried to pitch them on the deal in a closed-door meeting in the Capitol.
“It’s a total dumpster fire,” Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri said as he emerged from the meeting. “It’s garbage. This is what Washington, D.C., has done. This is why I ran for Congress — to try to stop this.”
What was meant to be a simple stopgap spending bill “is turning into a three-month omnibus that will result in more Democrats than Republicans voting for it,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, referring to legislation that lumps together all 12 appropriations bills. “The swamp is using farmers and victims of natural disasters as pawns to fund an over-bloated pet-project-filled disaster.”
Spending legislation that must pass before the end of the year often becomes a magnet for other measures. This year was no different. Included in the bill is a sweeping set of health measures including one that would impose new restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers, the companies hired by employers and government programs like Medicare to negotiate drug prices and oversee prescriptions.
Lawmakers hope to lower drug prices for patients, taxpayers and employers by discouraging those companies from steering patients toward more expensive drugs to bolster their own profits.
Another measure added to the spending package would allow E15 ethanol — gasoline blended with 15 percent corn-based ethanol — to be sold year-round.
It also contains a bill that would transfer control of Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia, paving the way for the Washington Commanders football team to move their stadium from Maryland to play home games in the nation’s capital.
And it includes a bipartisan measure that would criminalize the publication of “nonconsensual intimate visual depictions,” including deepfake pornography, and require social media platforms to have procedures in place to remove the content after being notified by a victim.
Negotiations over the bill hit a snag over the provisions providing assistance to farmers.
The last farm bill was written in 2018 and expired in September after a one-year extension, leaving American farmers in limbo as they try to run their businesses on six-year-old policy. Even though Democrats and Republicans agreed it was time for an updated bill, negotiations broke down when the two sides could not resolve a core dispute over how to pay for it. Republicans wanted to cut nutrition assistance to fund increased financial support for farmers, while Democrats said both were important.
In the absence of a new farm bill, Agriculture Committee leaders insisted that the year-end spending bill must include direct financial assistance to farmers. The final figure of $10 billion was far less than committee leaders and the agriculture industry lobby had hoped for.
“It’s not exactly what we wanted, but it’s a great start,” said Representative Glenn Thompson, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the Agriculture Committee.
The aid would be available to any farmers who applied for federal agricultural funding programs such as crop insurance, subsidies or disaster assistance in 2024, and would be distributed based on how many acres of eligible crops they grow.
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