The House voted 220-211 Tuesday to fund federal agencies beyond the end of the fiscal year while suspending the debt limit through December 2022, combining two urgent fiscal deadlines in a bill that now faces a Senate blockade. With government funding scheduled to expire after September 30 and Treasury warning that its borrowing capacity could be exhausted in October, Congress has little time to resolve either dispute.

The party-line House vote passed H.R. 5305, a continuing resolution designed to keep agencies operating through December 3 while also providing disaster relief and assistance related to Afghan evacuees. Republicans opposed the measure, arguing that Democrats should address the debt ceiling on their own rather than attach it to legislation that normally requires bipartisan support.

The debt-limit provision would suspend the statutory ceiling through December 16, 2022. A contemporaneous Congressional Research Service analysis noted that the limit had been reinstated August 1 at roughly $28.4 trillion and that Treasury was already relying on extraordinary measures to continue paying obligations authorized by Congress.

Two deadlines are now moving on different clocks

The government-funding deadline is fixed: without a new appropriations law or continuing resolution, many federal agencies would begin shutting down when the new fiscal year starts October 1. The debt-limit deadline is less precise because it depends on daily federal receipts, payments and cash management.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders in a September 8 letter that the department’s cash and extraordinary measures were most likely to be exhausted sometime in October. She said uncertainty around tax receipts and pandemic-related spending made it impossible at that point to give Congress a specific date.

The distinction matters because a shutdown and a debt-limit breach are different events. A shutdown occurs when Congress fails to provide legal authority for agencies to spend on many operations. A debt-limit impasse could eventually leave Treasury without enough borrowing authority and cash to meet obligations Congress has already enacted, including benefit payments, salaries, vendor invoices and interest on federal debt.

Yellen has repeatedly emphasized that increasing or suspending the ceiling does not authorize new programs. In an August statement, she said the action permits Treasury to finance previously enacted commitments and warned that failing to meet those commitments would damage the economy and American households.

The Senate math makes the House strategy uncertain

Democratic leaders paired the debt limit with government funding in part because a continuing resolution is must-pass legislation. But Senate Republicans have said they will not provide the votes needed to advance a debt-limit suspension, creating the possibility that the combined House bill will fail and Congress will have to separate the two issues as the shutdown deadline approaches.

Most Senate legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats control 50 seats and can break ties through Vice President Kamala Harris, but that does not by itself provide enough votes to end debate on the House package. Republican leaders argue that because Democrats are pursuing large spending legislation through the budget reconciliation process, they should use a partisan process to address borrowing authority as well.

Democrats respond that the debt now subject to the limit reflects obligations enacted under presidents and Congresses of both parties. Treasury began using extraordinary measures immediately after the prior suspension expired; Yellen’s August 2 notice described suspensions and accounting steps involving federal retirement funds that temporarily create borrowing room without changing beneficiaries’ legal entitlements.

The conflict has therefore become partly a dispute over political responsibility rather than the need to raise the ceiling itself. Both parties have voted for debt-limit legislation in previous administrations, but neither wants to bear sole responsibility for an unpopular vote when the other party controls Congress.

Treasury warnings are growing more explicit

On Wednesday, six former Treasury secretaries from Democratic and Republican administrations sent congressional leaders a joint letter urging immediate action. They warned that even a short default could threaten economic growth, disrupt markets and damage trust in the full faith and credit of the United States.

The former secretaries also rejected the idea that Treasury could simply prioritize some payments while delaying others if cash ran short. They said there is no viable way to manage the federal government’s enormous payment system so as to guarantee against default once available resources are insufficient.

Treasury’s own debt-limit explanation lists Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, tax refunds and interest among the obligations financed through federal borrowing. The department says Congress has acted dozens of times since 1960 to raise, extend or revise the limit under presidents of both parties.

Congress may have to separate the fights

The House package also includes tens of billions of dollars for disaster response after hurricanes and wildfires and billions more to support Afghan evacuees. Those provisions, along with basic government funding, have broader bipartisan constituencies than the debt-limit suspension.

If Senate Republicans block the package as promised, lawmakers could strip out the debt provision and pass a clean continuing resolution to prevent a shutdown, leaving Democrats to pursue another route for the borrowing limit. That would solve the more immediate September 30 deadline while allowing the debt-ceiling fight to continue into October.

The political risk is that procedural delay consumes the remaining time. Financial markets have so far shown limited reaction, but past debt-limit standoffs have increased short-term government borrowing costs and shaken confidence even when Congress ultimately acted before default.

The House vote therefore does not resolve either fiscal problem. It places them on the Senate floor together and forces lawmakers to decide whether the deadlines will remain linked. With one measured in days and the other likely in weeks, Congress may soon discover that avoiding a shutdown is the easier of the two tasks.