The House of Representatives will vote on a $1.7 trillion government funding package on Friday, a day after the measure was approved by the Senate and just hours before the midnight shutdown deadline.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced the House vote Thursday afternoon, shortly after the Senate passed the omnibus bill. He said the House vote was postponed until Friday because the meticulous process of preparing the bill — which spans 4,155 pages — for submission from the Senate to the House of Representatives would take hours.
“I was over in the Senate talking to those who are going to prepare the bill to be sent to this chamber. Unfortunately, the process takes a very long time, and it won’t keep us busy for a long period of time. That means it won’t reach us before midnight tonight,” said Hoyer.
“That is why I am going to tell members that we will not have any — I believe, recorded votes — until 9 a.m. tomorrow at the earliest. And members must be available at 9 AM and after,” he added.
The majority leader said the House of Representatives would proceed “as soon as we have the documents to process.”
The House of Representatives will also pass a short-term, continuing resolution on Friday that would extend the funding deadline to December 30. This gives the law time to process it after it has been passed without shutting down the government. The Senate unanimously approved the measure Thursday afternoon.
“So again, we won’t be holding any more votes tonight, we’ll meet at 9 a.m. and the votes will be taken as soon as we’re ready,” Hoyer said on the floor.
The Senate passed the bus package on Thursday afternoon. The measure, which will finance the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2023, includes $45 billion in military and economic aid to Ukraine.
The bill also provides $38 billion for emergency disaster relief, as well as a bill to revise the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
The Senate added eight amendments to the bill during a marathon voting series on Thursday. One of them was a provision that would give some groups of terrorist victims — including the families of victims of September 11, 2001 — access to a compensation fund.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spoke Thursday about the process needed to get a bill from the Senate to the House of Representatives, noting that the omnibus will take particularly longer due to the length of the measure.
“When you have the bill, you sit side by side and read everything that’s in it so that it is—what’s on the parchment is exactly what the bill is. With thousands of pages, this takes a very long time. When that’s done and we get a signal from the Senate that they want us to send the bill, go to the Senate,” Pelosi told reporters during their weekly news conference.
“And it is a wonderful thing. You go to the Senate and go through section by section, section by section, House and Senate, not as long as you read every word but confirm the sections,” she added.