AFTER MONTHS of wrangling and short-term extensions, on January 7th America’s congressional leaders announced the outline of an agreement to avoid a government shutdown. If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. Although the latest news from House and Senate leadership is a step forward, serious disagreements persist and Congress remains far from the finish line.

Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, told his colleagues over the weekend that the leadership had agreed to $886bn for defence and $704bn for other discretionary spending for the 2024 fiscal year. That is in line with a deal negotiated last year between Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling, total discretionary spending would be limited to $1.59trn in 2024.

In a separate announcement on January 7th Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said that the top line was actually $1.66trn, with $772.7bn in non-defence discretionary spending. But that figure is also in line with the Biden-McCarthy talks: an extra $69bn was included as part of a side deal during the same debt-ceiling negotiations. Some of that extra money came from moving around existing funds.

In addition to the dispute over the top line, Mr Schumer and Mr Johnson also disagree about the exact nature of an ostensibly agreed-upon funding reduction for the Internal Revenue Service. How to calculate the rescission of unspent covid-relief funds will prove tricky as well. The challenge will be translating the leaders’ broad agreement into legislation that actually can pass both chambers of Congress.

Time is running short. The government is funded by 12 separate appropriations bills. Four of them—covering agriculture, energy and more—will expire on January 19th, and the rest of the government remains funded only until February 2nd. If Congress is unable to reach at least a short-term deal by either deadline, parts of the government will begin to shut down. A short-term fix could buy time but would be controversial among House Republicans.

Mr Johnson said that “this represents the most favourable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” but he is already taking heat from his right. The hardline House Freedom Caucus knocked him for using “typical Washington” maths and said the deal was “even worse than we thought”. Democrats may have less trouble selling their side on the deal, but House conservatives want unrelated policy changes anathema to Democratic lawmakers, such as rolling back the Biden administration’s climate agenda, attached to appropriations bills.

“I don’t know how this agreement actually gets them any closer to moving appropriations bills on the House floor,” says Paul Winfree, head of the Economic Policy Innovation Centre, a think-tank. He believes it will be difficult to pass long-term funding without resolving the dispute over supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel, as well as policy changes to border security. Members of Congress see all the elements as connected, he says, “and it’s very, very hard to bite off one piece without biting it all off.”

Senate negotiators hope to introduce their own framework for a Ukraine and border-policy compromise sometime this week, though even if it can clear the more deal-friendly Senate, its future remains uncertain in the House. Meanwhile, Mr Johnson has vowed not to pass another short-term funding bill, having already allowed one nearly identical to the legislation that precipitated the downfall of Mr McCarthy.

Mr Johnson, increasingly derided by the right, was once a relatively reliable hardline vote. His elevation to the speakership has not made him less conservative, but it has brought him in touch with the reality of governing in 2024. The Republican Party has an increasingly slim majority in the House and must negotiate with a Democrat in the White House. The alternative to the hard work of reaching a compromise is the self-defeating chaos of a government shutdown. ■