Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s original plan to avert a government shutdown has met with massive resistance from Republicans. Representatives from numerous factions of his party are wary of a six-month interim funding package, which the Democrats have already rejected.
Mr Johnson has said he plans to unveil a budget bill this week that would extend federal funding until March 28. It includes a measure requiring proof of US citizenship for voter registration. The inclusion of the voting restriction bill was a nod to the right wing of his party and an attempt to force politically vulnerable Democrats into a delicate vote.
But his $1.6 trillion proposal almost immediately met with skepticism from House Republicans returning to Washington after a long summer recess. And the political lines in that fight hardened on Tuesday when former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, ordered members of his party to shut down the government unless they received “absolute assurances on election security.”
Still, Republicans were outraged by Johnson’s plan, with hardliners including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky saying they would oppose the bill because it would increase current spending levels, which they say are too high.
The bill “does not cut spending, and the shiny object associated with it will be dropped like a hot potato before it passes,” Massie said, referring to the voting restriction. He added, “I refuse to be an actor in this theater of failure.”
At the same time, Republican defense officials, including the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and Representative Mike D. Rogers of Alabama, said they opposed the plan because expanding current spending levels over such a long period would amount to cutting military spending, which would otherwise continue to rise in the coming months.
The House of Representatives cleared a procedural hurdle on Tuesday and agreed to pass the bill, but its fate was still uncertain. Minutes later, Trump added fuel to the fire, urging Republicans to “finish the matter” if Democrats refused to pass the voting bill.
“Unless Republicans in the House and Senate receive absolute assurances on election security, THEY SHOULD NOT ADVANCE A CONTINUING BUDGET RESOLUTION,” Trump wrote on social media.
The internal disagreements were the latest annoyance for Johnson in a seemingly endless series of skirmishes over government funding that have plagued Republicans since they took control of the House. Each episode ended with the same result: passage of a bipartisan budget bill that angered the right wing of the House Republican conference.
During a closed session in the basement of the Capitol on Tuesday morning, Johnson tried to win Republicans over to the plan.
“I believe we can fund the government responsibly, and I believe we can do right by the American people and ensure the security of our elections,” Johnson told reporters afterward, calling the fight over the ballot measure “a fight worth fighting.”
It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and there is little evidence that this is actually happening. But Republicans are pushing that the citizenship test law is a necessary step, warning that illegal migrant votes could sway the election. Democrats have condemned the law as xenophobic and warn that its passage could make it harder for eligible voters to register.
Many Republicans were unconvinced by the spending measure itself after Tuesday’s meeting, suggesting problems ahead.
And even if Johnson succeeds in uniting his conference behind the short-term spending bill, the proposal would be doomed to failure in the Democratic-controlled Senate. White House officials said Monday that President Biden would veto the bill. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and majority leader, called the plan a “frivolous” project.
“We’ve seen this time and time again,” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Tuesday, using the acronym for “Continuing Resolution to Fund the Government” as he laid out the situation. “Is it any surprise that the Speaker’s purely partisan CR appears to be in trouble? The answer is quite simple: The House should stop wasting time on a CR proposal that cannot become law.”
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, stopped short of supporting the House approach, saying Senate Republicans need to wait and see what the House can do, but he advised against any move that could lead to a government shutdown.
“Shutting down the government is always a bad idea, no matter the time,” McConnell said when reporters asked him about Trump’s stance.
Democrats and many Republicans prefer a shorter-term spending bill that extends into early December and allows time to resolve their budget differences. But setting the level of funding for 2025 and beyond will be left to Biden and the current Congress – not the next president and Congress.
Johnson has repeatedly decided that he would rather support a bipartisan budget bill, which earned him a backlash from ultra-conservative lawmakers, than allow a government shutdown. That impulse is likely to prevail this time too, especially with the election fast approaching. House Republicans, who are locked in a tight race that could determine which party controls the chamber, have warned that they will face a backlash from voters if a government shutdown occurs.
“Playing loose with the government on the eve of a national election will not do our presidential candidate any good,” Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Tuesday. “It will not do any good to our prospects of keeping the government alive and functioning as we conduct the most important election in the country’s history.”
Even some hard-liners among Republicans had to admit that many of their colleagues were eager to leave Washington and get back on the campaign trail.
“My admonition to our colleagues: vote on it and go home,” said Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina.
But the political calculus Johnson faces is also more contentious than ever. Polls suggest the battle for a majority in the House of Representatives will be extremely close, potentially opening the door for Johnson to return to power in January – if he can win the support of his fractious party.
This would require appeasing the restless right, which is demanding that Mr Johnson speak up for them.
“Conservatives like me are not going to vote for CR unless we know we have a speaker, a leader who is actually going to go into battle,” said Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who led the effort to oust Mr Johnson earlier this year. “Otherwise it’s pointless. It’s really a waste of everyone’s time.”
