Congress raced toward a pair of votes on Thursday to send President Biden stopgap legislation to fund federal agencies through early March, acting one day before a deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown as leaders toil to enact a longer-term spending plan.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, cleared the way on Wednesday for a midday vote on the measure. It is intended to give Congress time to pass spending bills totaling $1.66 trillion to fund the government through the fall, holding most federal spending steady while bolstering the military.
The legislation “will give Congress time to continue working on the appropriations process to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year,” Mr. Schumer said.
House leaders announced they would take up the measure and quickly pass it in a vote expected by evening, as lawmakers rushed to leave Washington before a predicted snowstorm that they worried could ground flights and strand them in the capital for the weekend.
That would clear the measure for Mr. Biden, who is expected to quickly sign it before the midnight deadline on Friday.
It promised to be an unpleasant experience for Speaker Mike Johnson, who negotiated the overall spending package with Mr. Schumer and has been savaged by the hard right faction in the House for not insisting on greater cuts. He will need significant numbers of Democrats to back the measure given expected Republican opposition.
Even considering the bill represents a reversal by the speaker, who pledged last year never to take up another short-term spending package. But time ran out to enact the 12 individual bills that fund the government, forcing the hand of Mr. Johnson, who does not want House Republicans to be blamed for a disruption in government services heading into elections in November.
To overcome procedural objections to moving ahead quickly in the Senate, Mr. Schumer agreed to allow Republicans to propose three changes that would effectively derail the measure. But all are expected to fall short, clearing the way for approval and a House vote.
As he did in the fall with the previous stopgap spending bill, Mr. Johnson will then have to use special procedures to speed the measure through the House, limiting debate and requiring a two-thirds majority that is likely to be made up of more Democrats than Republicans.
Under the legislation, funding for agriculture, veterans programs, transportation, housing and other federal operations would be maintained through March 1, with funding for the rest of the government, including the Pentagon, expiring on March 8.
With the additional time, members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees hope to push through the dozen bills funding the government according to the spending level agreed to by Mr. Johnson and Mr. Schumer. But it will not be easy.
Besides objections to the spending itself, far-right conservatives in the House are demanding the measures include restrictions on abortion and other limits on government authority that Democrats say they will not accept, setting up a showdown over those policy provisions.
“We still have an awful lot of work to get done in a short amount of time to finalize serious appropriations bills, free of partisan poison pills that protect key investments in our country’s future,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.