House Speaker Mike Johnson is bringing lawmakers back to Washington next week with a plan that would keep the government open and extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for Congress fulfilling its most basic duties. Much of the GOP conference likes the plan, including most of the far right. And even if his gambit fails, they think Johnson is putting some Democrats in a tough political spot.
The problem is everyone seems to know the plan is a charade that is doomed to fail.
As Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie told NOTUS, Congress is about to perform some “failure theater.”
Johnson’s plan is to pair a six-month government funding extension with the SAVE Act, a bill that requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, but Republican lawmakers claim some states aren’t vigilant enough while registering voters. Democrats generally oppose the SAVE Act, noting that current law already prohibits noncitizens from voting and raising concerns that stricter requirements would only make it more difficult to register eligible voters. The SAVE Act has already passed the House with unanimous Republican support and approval from five Democrats.
But Democrats are unlikely to go along with Johnson’s latest move for another reason: They oppose making any concession on a simple government funding extension.
They say Republicans are playing politics and risking a government shutdown — a shutdown that no one seems to want before Election Day — and they think Johnson is bluffing. They say this effort is more about Johnson demonstrating to Republicans that they can’t make new policy on a government funding bill in this divided Congress than actually achieving his demands.
And while some Republicans are already insisting Johnson shouldn’t fold if Democrats want a showdown, others seem to know this isn’t a winning hand.
“It’s a worthy issue,” Rep. Don Bacon, one of the more moderate Republicans in the House, said of the proof of citizenship proposal. “Whether or not we’ll be able to get it passed through the Senate, the president — that’s probably an uphill carry.”
Like other Republicans, Bacon sees value in simply highlighting the bill. “If Democrats want to oppose it, I think the voters deserve to have this debate,” he said. “And I think it’s a good issue for us.”
But he told NOTUS he’s confident there’s enough time to pass Johnson’s plan, watch it hit a Senate-shaped wall and then negotiate a compromise that can actually become law.
“In the end, we’ll probably have to have a second vote on a CR,” Bacon said. “One thing’s for sure: I don’t want a shutdown.”
As Johnson looks to secure his future as speaker by both winning more seats on Election Day and by shoring up support within the GOP conference, his strategy on government funding has become a major test. Johnson came into the speakership by vowing to complete work on all 12 individual appropriations bills before the House left for its August recess. That didn’t happen.
Now, Johnson is trying to navigate a situation where he needs to show his Republican colleagues that he’s willing to fight but also avoid a shutdown that could be politically damaging.
In a call with the speaker this week, several vulnerable House Republicans sounded the alarm that a shutdown would hurt their reelection chances. One source who was on the call told NOTUS that Rep. Nick LaLota asked Johnson what would happen when the Senate strips out the SAVE Act and sends back a clean continuing resolution. Johnson, according to this source, didn’t want to discuss that outcome during their conversation. Instead, he said Republicans should demonstrate a unanimous desire to keep the SAVE Act in the bill.
“Many Republican members, particularly those in swing districts, have huge concerns about a government shutdown weeks before the general election,” one GOP member who shares those concerns told NOTUS. “Allowing our military and border patrol to go unpaid as would be the case during a shutdown is simply unacceptable.”
But with Johnson’s current plan, almost every Republican in the House seems to be able to find something they can take away from the process.
For the far right, Johnson is standing up for an issue important to Donald Trump and their voters. And the speaker is doing the right thing — as long as he’s actually willing to fight.
“TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS ACTION,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman texted NOTUS when asked about Johnson’s plan. “HOWEVER WE HAVE TO NOT RETREAT!”
It’s the “NOT RETREAT” part that may be difficult.
GOP leaders have tried similar tactics in the past, essentially passing government funding bills with conservative policies attached, watching the Senate strip them out and then letting House Republicans decide whether they’d prefer more doomed negotiations or a government shutdown. In 2013, Republicans went with a government shutdown, demanding the Senate repeal Obamacare in exchange for funding the government. At the end of 2018, Republicans shut down portions of the federal government while insisting that a Democratic Senate fund Trump’s border wall.
Neither ploy was successful.
This time around, most Republicans seem to be in on the act, knowing Johnson will most likely cave to a clean government funding bill in the end.
As one Republican lawmaker told NOTUS: Johnson will fight for including the SAVE Act “until he doesn’t.”
Still, this lawmaker is supportive of the plan. The same can be said of Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker. But even as Walker praised the gambit, he was already hedging that getting the SAVE Act written into law wouldn’t be necessary for Republicans to be able to call Johnson’s spending plan a win.
“If Democrats refuse to consider the SAVE Act in the Senate and send a ‘clean’ CR back to the House, conservatives can still deliver a massive win for Americans by avoiding an omnibus,” Walker said. “A CR through 2025 will save taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.”
Perhaps the Republican most critical of the plan is Massie. He thinks the House should pass a yearlong stopgap bill instead, which would tee up an automatic 1% cut at the end of April if lawmakers haven’t sorted out the full spending bills before then.
Johnson, Massie told NOTUS, isn’t interested in that idea because “he doesn’t really want to cut spending.”
“But to be fair, he’s representing a lot in our conference who don’t want to cut spending either,” Massie texted, in his characteristically sassy tone.
Democrats have said they would rather push the government funding deadline into this December, giving Congress one more chance to pass spending bills — or one large omnibus bill — after the election. Republicans generally want to delay negotiations until a new president, like Trump, can be sworn in. That would allow them, they believe, to enact a more conservative budget.
But that plan has its own critics, including House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole. The Oklahoma Republican has repeatedly argued that Congress should make a real attempt at funding the government this year instead of holding out for a potential Trump administration.
Whoever wins the presidency, he said, “will probably make the decision: Do you want to get these bills done before you come into office, or do you want to show up with the possibility of a shutdown right in front of you?”
“I don’t think we ought to do that to a president,” Cole told NOTUS. “But I don’t get to make that decision all by myself.”