By CATIE EDMONDSON and CARL HULSE NYTimes News Service
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WASHINGTON — With time running short to avoid a government shutdown at the end of next week, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are pitching Republicans on a stopgap bill that would keep federal dollars flowing at current levels through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The idea is something of a surrender by Republicans, as it would maintain spending at levels enacted under former President Joe Biden and does not account for the cuts being made by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency. But the president and speaker are embracing it as a way to avoid a politically damaging shutdown fight among Republicans while still affording Trump wide latitude to slash spending on his own in defiance of Congress.

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“I am working with the GREAT House Republicans on a Continuing Resolution to fund the Government until September to give us some needed time to work on our Agenda,” Trump wrote Wednesday on social media. “Conservatives will love this Bill, because it sets us up to cut Taxes and Spending in Reconciliation, all while effectively FREEZING Spending this year.”

It is unclear whether the plan could pass before midnight on March 14 and avert a shutdown. Trump’s appeal was aimed at soothing far-right House members who traditionally have opposed government spending bills, particularly stopgap measures that lump together money for every federal program without reducing funding for any of them.

He hosted hard-liners at the White House on Tuesday afternoon and encouraged them to support the extension, and some skeptics emerged saying they were considering doing so. They noted that Trump had already shown a willingness to ignore spending legislation and pursue deep cuts on his own.

But members of both parties on the appropriations committees in the House and Senate are deeply opposed, arguing that it would starve some departments of needed funding and cede too much power over spending to the executive branch.

“It locks in programs that should be trimmed,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It doesn’t give increases to agencies that need them, like the Department of Defense, and it’s based on the Biden budget. Why would we want to lock in the priorities of the Biden budget?”

Republicans and Democrats on the appropriations panels have been negotiating an agreement that would allow Congress to move forward with individual spending bills for the remainder of the fiscal year, but it would be impossible to get those measures enacted in time to beat the shutdown deadline.

Unlike regular spending bills, temporary extensions do not explicitly direct how the federal funding levels lawmakers set should be allocated. That would give the Trump administration broader discretion over large sums of money at a time when the president has already moved aggressively to block the government from disbursing funds authorized by Congress for a variety of programs.

Collins said the administration had requested an extra $30 billion for the Pentagon for use as officials there see fit, an approach that would hand much of the responsibility for divvying up the money to the executive branch rather than Congress.

Top Democrats have been urging their members to oppose an extension through September, insisting instead that appropriators continue trying to strike a deal themselves. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said Thursday that “if Republicans decide to take this approach, as Speaker Johnson indicated, it’s his expectation that Republicans are going it alone.”

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