Mike Johnson's Funding Deal Outrages Republican: 'Monstrosity'

Shortly after congressional leaders announced a bipartisan agreement on another short-term funding bill to avert a looming partial government shutdown, the news ignited criticism online.

Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, quickly took to X, formerly Twitter, to bash the stopgap spending bill.

"The first installment of the Omnibus is allegedly coming up for a vote next week," the congressman wrote on X. "They've been writing this behemoth behind closed doors for weeks. If just 1/3 of US Representatives will oppose it we can stop this monstrosity."

The agreement—struck in an effort to keep the government open for a few more weeks—paves the way for a swift vote in the House as soon as Thursday, with the Senate expected to take up the measure before Friday's midnight deadline.

The bipartisan deal was announced on Wednesday night in a joint statement by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with Senators Patty Murray and Susan Collins, as well as Representatives Kay Granger and Rosa DeLauro.

"We are in agreement that Congress must work in a bipartisan manner to fund our government," the congressional leaders wrote.

The lawmakers said the deal would continue funding for some government agencies for another week, through March 8, and the rest of the agencies for an additional two weeks, until March 22.

The leaders also said they had reached an agreement on six of the 12 annual spending bills that would "be voted on and enacted prior to March 8."

Newsweek reached out via email on Wednesday to Massie's representatives for comment.

The deal announcement comes after a meeting at the White House on Tuesday where congressional leaders met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to strike a compromise on a measure to provide government funding to avoid a shutdown, as well as military aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Newsweek also reached out via email to Biden's representatives for comment on Wednesday.

The tentative agreement did not include an immediate plan to approve the $95 billion in aid for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, the Associated Press reports.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a member of the Appropriations Committee and close ally of Biden, told Newsweek on Wednesday that he thinks the deal will succeed.

"We apparently had a very different approach to appropriating between the House and Senate," the senator said. "In the Senate, we hammered out our partisan issues and passed strongly bipartisan bills. In the House, they passed very partisan bills that have lots of poison pills and policy writers. And our negotiations over the last couple of weeks have largely boiled down to we're not accepting any of your poison pills. And I suspect that we will end up avoiding a government shutdown narrowly and moving forward on a package of bills here very soon."