The CR Is A Trojan Horse

Speaker Johnson will bring another continuing resolution to fund the government to the floor on Tuesday. Here’s what to expect.

Photo of Speaker Mike Johnson courtesy of Forbes

On Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson will ask the House to vote on a “Continuing Resolution” or CR to fund the government.

Think of a CR as a fiscal punt. Normally, Congress agrees on a budget with top line numbers for expenditures. Then it sends the budget to committees that specifically spend or “appropriate” those funds.

But the GOP House hasn’t been able to pass a budget since it took power in 2023. They keep punting, adopting Biden’s top line budget numbers to keep the government open, then setting a new deadline to come up with a different budget. Sure, they’ve passed a blueprint for their budget, but the actual budget is the far harder part.

It’s useful to remember that last year the GOP House couldn’t even pass a CR without Democratic help because Republicans were so divided. On Tuesday, they’re going to try to punt again, this time for six months, believing they have barely enough votes to pass it.

But this CR is far more dangerous than the ones they kept passing over the past two years. And that’s because of who is in the White House.

The DOGE bags

In 2023 and 2024, GOP leadership, first under Speaker McCarthy and then under Speaker Johnson, repeatedly begged Democrats for help keeping the government open. The Dems provided that help—so long as Congress kept funding levels more or less where they’d been set under Biden. It was as if Dems were actually running the budget process.

But this time around, Democrats oppose a CR and won’t offer help to pass it. That’s because they know that operating the government with only top line numbers—and no details from the committees—opens the door to mischief from the White House. Specifically, such an arrangement allows Trump and Musk to reallocate money within departments.

The ranking House member on the Appropriations Committee, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), described it as “a power grab for the White House” that “further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people.” For example, within the FAA, Musk could simply reallocate funds from current communication providers over to his own Starlink service, and there would be no check upon that authority.

DeLauro’s ranking Senate counterpart agrees. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) warned, “We cannot stand by and accept a yearlong power grab CR that would help Elon take a chainsaw to programs that families rely on and agencies that keep our communities safe.”

Others note that the White House could simply refuse to spend funds, as it did with its OMB memo that is now under challenge in courts, creating another constitutional showdown. Why agree to continue to fund the government if Trump won’t agree to stand down from his impoundment of funds?

Fiscal hawks turn chicken

While Joe Biden was president, deficit minded Republicans in the House, who comprise a good chunk of the far right House Freedom Caucus, consistently threatened to sink CRs proposed by their own leader, Speaker Johnson. They opposed the CRs because they believed the cost-cutting didn’t go far enough.

Now that Trump is in the White House, he’s turning the screws on these same members. This time, they may go along with the CR, in part because they fear a backlash from the MAGA base, and in part because they believe they have good political cover. Specifically, they claim they can now swallow Biden-era numbers in the budget because Musk’s sledgehammer cost-cutting, in their view, will accomplish what they could not by legislation.

In other words, if their goal is to cut government spending, they can vote for a bill that keeps it the same, with a wink and a nod to Musk, on whom they are counting to do that work for them. Never mind that the cost-cutting of congressionally appropriated funds is an unconstitutional impoundment, or that the mass firings of federal workers without cause violates statutes or union agreements. These so-called deficit hawks can at least go back and tell their constituents that they handed the keys to the vault over to DOGE and Musk.

As the Washington Post reported,

Trump recently met with members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus to address concerns. The group, whose members often vote against such measures, appears sold on Trump’s full-year funding plan, and members said they believe it can pass with just Republican votes.

Their support hinges on Congress giving the Trump administration more leeway to use federal funds as they wish. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), who has voted against CRs throughout his career, told reporters after the meeting that he was “open” to possibly supporting it after Trump reassured him that DOGE, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, would implement cuts.

This passing of the buck will probably provide enough political cover for most of the House Freedom Caucus to come on board with the CR. The vote on Tuesday will come down to one or two members, as it has of late, but Trump will probably strong-arm any final defectors into submission, just as he did recently on the budget blueprint.

So what happens if the CR passes the House?

The question of where and when to draw a line in the sand is a tough one. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has come out against the CR in a letter to Democrats. But as discussed above, they are probably one vote shy of being able to defeat it.

Assuming the CR barely passes along party lines in the House, Democrats in the Senate will still have a chance to kill it. That’s because the filibuster remains available for use against the CR due to a fine but critical distinction: While normal budget bills that come through the “reconciliation” process in committees are not subject to filibuster, CRs are not “reconciled” and therefore do not enjoy this privileged status.

That means that if the CR hits a filibuster in the Senate, the GOP will need seven senators to vote to overcome it. Democrats are holding their cards close, but at least one senator, John Fetterman (D?-PA), who is positioning himself as a Manchin-like “centrist,” has come out publicly for the CR. In his words, even as he criticized “resistance” Democrats for their protests against Trump, “Never, never, never vote for a shutdown—ever.”

Fetterman may not be alone in voting for the CR. Democrats in the Senate understandably may not want to be the ones who voted to shut down the government by filibustering the bill that would keep it open. Instead, they may seek alternatives, such as finagling a far shortened CR timeline to allow for the budget process to be completed soon—and less time for Trump and Musk to move money around inside of departments in violation of appropriations.

The CR may not be the real battle

It makes sense for House Dems to draw the line now and force the GOP to pass the CR on its own. And it may even make some grudging political sense for the Senate Dems to ensure they aren’t the ones blamed for a government shutdown. But this doesn’t mean the entire fight is lost even if the CR passes both chambers.

After all, a CR that maintains Biden-era budget numbers for another six months isn’t some big win for the Republicans. It actually shows how weak they are. If they were stronger, they could ram through a budget through reconciliation that would be filibuster proof.

The bigger problem remains that, under the proposed CR, Trump and Musk will be quietly granted greater license to abuse their power and reallocate funds without congressional approval. That’s the “Trojan horse” aspect of the CR.

And yet, it’s fair to assume that Musk would love a government shutdown, too. That way his DOGE hackers could be designated “essential” and continue their takeover while everything is shuttered. Many Democrats do not want to see that happen. In any government shutdown, it’s always the federal workers who suffer the most.

That’s why the CR is likely to pass in some form, assuming it gets out of the House. But it’s crucial to understand that just because the government stays open under a CR with Biden-era funding levels doesn’t mean the money will be spent as before. In fact, we should assume that it will not be, and that Trump and Musk will seize this opportunity to assert even more control of public funds.

So are we well and truly screwed?

If the CR is a Trojan horse that will allow greater fiscal chicanery by the White House, but a shutdown is no good either, what can be done?

It’s important for House Democrats to take a principled stand and to make the case for why the CR should fail with no help from their party. And Senate Democrats should use a filibuster threat to try, for example, to compel a far shorter CR that will force the GOP’s hand sooner and grant less time for White House shenanigans.

But over what precisely are they forcing the GOP’s hand? The answer is the budget. The real pain for the GOP comes when they actually have to turn over their financial blueprints to congressional committees. At that point, they’ll have to admit that they are slashing Medicaid benefits by hundreds of billions of dollars—something the math already tells us—just to fund tax breaks for the uber wealthy. And that’s a toxically unpopular move.

If the GOP can barely get a CR through today, that budget is going to drive a far deeper wedge. Republican House members in swing districts will be the most vulnerable to political pressure from voters, especially elderly ones whose benefits are on the line. Medicaid, after all, pays for around 63 percent of nursing home stays. Expect very angry town halls and an outright revolt should they move to slash benefits.

We’ll see tomorrow evening if the GOP manages to squeak a CR through. If they do, don’t lose heart. The budget battle won’t be decided by that vote, not even close. A punt still means the GOP can’t move the ball any farther without risking a loss of control over it. The more the GOP ties its political fortunes to DOGE cost cutting, and to the increasingly unpopular figure of Elon Musk, the more damage they will do to themselves with voters.

And when they do finally have to sit down to pass Trump’s draconian budget, and the lives of millions of the most vulnerable Americans are plainly on the line, all banners will be raised for the fight.