Speaker Johnson has just announced a deal with Democrats that will push the big fight over government funding to later this year, when the country is in the middle of a heated presidential election.

Here’s the news via Axios:

The leaders of both parties in Congress on Tuesday announced a deal to keep the federal government funded through September and avoid a shutdown.

Lawmakers are now racing to draft legislative text that can be voted on before the Friday night spending deadline.

“An agreement has been reached for DHS appropriations, which will allow completion of the FY24 appropriations process,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security budget had been the last major sticking point, with the White House rejecting lawmakers’ proposal that the agency be funded by a stopgap measure.

Johnson said committees “have begun drafting bill text to be prepared for release and consideration by the full House and Senate as soon as possible.”

The six bills, combined into what is known as a “minibus,” will fund the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, State, Homeland Security and Treasury, as well as Congress itself.

Those are some of the largest – and most controversial – agency budgets. Lawmakers have fought bitterly over departmental policies related to abortion, diversity and border security.

The deal is expected to avoid the kind of drastic cuts and hardcore social and border security policy riders Johnson’s right-wing hardliners had been pushing for in order to secure bipartisan support.

Of course it won’t have any drastic cuts. The only way you get cuts is by being willing to allow the government to shut down and that’s not something Johnson would do.

And that certainly won’t happen in September when the election season is about as heated as it gets and the media is working overtime to protect Biden and Democrats.