WASHINGTON — Members of the 119th Congress emerged from a closed-door leadership meeting Wednesday visibly shaken to learn that the federal government once again requires funding, a recurring fiscal phenomenon lawmakers said they had not seen coming despite the calendar warning them about it for the past eleven months.
The looming Friday deadline, which appears in the same place on the same calendar every single year, was described by aides as “a real curveball,” “the kind of thing nobody could have predicted,” and “weirdly, exactly when this happened in 2024.”
House leadership has reportedly settled on a strategy of passing a short-term continuing resolution that funds the government through late January, at which point Congress will once again be ambushed by the unforeseeable arrival of late January.
“There’s a structural rhythm to legislative crisis management,” said Pierce Halloway, a senior fellow at the Beacon Institute for Procedural Studies, who has spent six years tracking what he calls “the December Surprise.” “They know it’s coming. They schedule around it. They book the flights home for the 19th. And then on the 17th, somebody in leadership goes, ‘Wait — does the government still need money?’ It’s almost spiritual at this point.”
Sources inside the Speaker’s office confirmed that the working draft of the CR runs 1,140 pages, of which roughly 90 actually pertain to government operations and the remaining 1,050 contain provisions that one Republican aide described as “things people slid under the door at 4 a.m. and we just sort of let happen.”
Senate Democrats announced they would oppose the bill on principle, then support it on pragmatism, then issue strongly worded statements about the next bill, in what observers called “a flawless execution of the standard four-step.” Senate Republicans countered by demanding spending cuts, agreeing to spending increases, and getting on a plane.
President Trump, asked about the shutdown threat during a Rose Garden event honoring a Florida cardiologist who had recently endorsed him, said the shutdown would be “the best shutdown ever, if it happens, which it won’t, unless I want it to, which I might.” He then returned to discussing the cardiologist.
By Thursday afternoon, House leadership had pivoted to a new plan: a one-week stopgap to give negotiators time to negotiate the longer stopgap that would give negotiators time to negotiate the actual bill. A staffer described the structure as “a Russian nesting doll, but for failure.”
Outside the Capitol, federal workers — who have been through this in 2013, 2018, 2019, 2023, and earlier this year — went about their day with the resigned bearing of people who have stopped buying Christmas gifts before December 22 on principle. “I’ve got a go-bag,” said one EPA scientist on her lunch break. “It has my mug, a phone charger, and a printed-out list of which credit card payments I can defer. I update it every November.”
Congress is expected to pass something Friday afternoon, declare victory, hold a press conference featuring at least one member describing the moment as “a win for the American people,” and then immediately leave town for a holiday recess that will end approximately four days before the next deadline they have not yet noticed.