Rushing to get out of town and back on the campaign trail, the House and Senate passed a stopgap spending bill on Wednesday, sending lawmakers home and the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk.
The House passed the continuing resolution in a 341-82 vote, with 132 Republicans and 209 Democrats voting for the bill, and 82 Republicans voting no.
Just under two hours later, Senators easily passed the bill by a vote of 78-18, with all 18 no votes coming from Republicans.
The bill represents something of a defeat for Republicans and Speaker Mike Johnson and a win for Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The speaker wanted to pass a six-month CR with the SAVE Act — legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote — but he didn’t have the votes. All but three Democrats in the House opposed that legislation, in addition to 14 Republicans.
Without the ability to pass a GOP offer to keep the government open, Johnson essentially had two options: give in to Democratic demands and pass a CR they would support or force a government shutdown.
Less than six weeks ahead of Election Day, Johnson chose the first option.
The speaker told House Republicans in a “Dear Colleague” letter earlier this week that “shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”
Donald Trump seemed to agree.
Johnson privately told his GOP colleagues during two closed-doors meetings this week that Trump doesn’t want a shutdown — and Trump’s desire to prevent that outcome certainly seemed to help keep him quiet.
After repeatedly saying Republicans should shut down the government if they didn’t get the SAVE Act, Trump hasn’t publicly spoken out against the CR. He still may, but Trump’s silence may have been pivotal for keeping Republicans onboard with the current bill.
Johnson was actually able to get a “majority of the majority” for the CR — an internally significant threshold, as it’s always controversial among Republicans when the speaker passes a bill that most of the GOP opposes. Had Trump spoken out, more Republicans would have almost certainly sided with the former president.
While Democrats were adamant that the spending standoff was always going to end with a mostly clean CR — there are some line-items, like the Secret Service and disaster aid, which are receiving extra money in this legislation — GOP leaders suggested they could get some Democratic concessions if Republicans had just stuck together.
Those concessions almost certainly wouldn’t have resulted in the SAVE Act. Democrats think that bill is unnecessary — it’s already illegal to vote if you’re a noncitizen — and they argue it’s simply designed to make it tougher to register to vote. But a united GOP front could have resulted in a different timeline for the CR.
Republicans originally wanted that six-month CR because it would have pushed the new spending deadline into March, when there will be a new president. The three-month CR extends funding until Dec. 20, when President Joe Biden will still be in a position to sign or veto the bill.
Lawmakers will have to come back right before Christmas and negotiate a longer-term spending deal. Traditionally, a deadline around the holidays has resulted in what Congress refers to as a “Christmas tree bill” — with members hanging all sorts of ornaments onto a massive omnibus spending bill.
The motivation to get home for Christmas also pushes lawmakers to just vote yes rather than haggle over the deal and cause a shutdown.
In that sense, the three-month CR could be critical for Democrats as they try to set up a larger spending agreement — and conservatives knew it.
But so did Republican defense hawks. Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers was one of the 14 Republicans who voted against the first iteration of the CR, which failed a week ago in a 202-220 vote. In total, six Republicans on the Armed Services Committee voted against the six-month CR, enough to single-handedly sink the legislation, though some of those members opposed the stopgap on other grounds.
All along, conservatives — just like Democrats — have insisted this process would end in a basically clean CR. As Rep. Thomas Massie put it, Johnson putting up the three-month bill with the SAVE Act attached was “failure theater.”
But as Johnson has argued, Republicans like Massie claimed the process was ending with a CR that Democrats would support — and then he went out and proved it. (Massie actually voted present on the failed CR, though he voted no on the three-month version Wednesday.)
By forcing Johnson to turn to Democrats to pass a government funding extension, the speaker’s detractors have further colored in the already tattooed image of Johnson as a dealmaker with Democrats. In the 11 months that he’s been speaker, Johnson has used Democrats to pass Ukraine aid, a government surveillance reauthorization and now, this latest government funding extension.
It’s not the reputation Johnson exactly wanted, but it’s the one he’s earned.
Miraculously, however, the speaker seems to have kept Trump on his side — for now at least.
Johnson appears to be managing his relationship with Trump better than either of the last two GOP speakers, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, and he’s tamped down any sort of speaker coup.
Again, for now.
Whether Johnson will be speaker next Congress will first be determined on Election Day. Democrats could very well win back the House, automatically deposing Johnson from his position, but the speaker could still be in trouble even if Republicans gain seats.
A vote to remove Johnson in May garnered 11 GOP votes. And plenty of other Republicans seem fed up with Johnson turning to Democrats to pass his legislative agenda. (Johnson is only still speaker, in fact, because 163 Democrats voted to save him during that failed motion to remove the speaker.)
Then there is the matter of a lack of GOP wins. Republicans told NOTUS this week that they hardly felt there were any real GOP accomplishments this Congress.
Republicans, Rep. Bob Good said, “don’t have anything to show for having controlled the House for two years.”
“On every significant piece of legislation, we have surrendered to the White House and to the Democrat-controlled Senate,” he said on Tuesday, the day before Republicans did just that once again.
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Ben T.N. Mause is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.