Speaker Mike Johnson spent most of Thursday waiting to make his next “play call” after the House rejected the GOP’s government funding plan. It turns out the next play is to throw in the towel.
Although Johnson held off on an official announcement, the news that Johnson is proceeding with a continuing resolution until December — one that Democrats will support — began leaking out Thursday afternoon.
“We will very likely be forced to eat a short-term CR into December, which I will oppose, and that bill will pass,” Rep. Clay Higgins told NOTUS, spelling out what’s been apparent — but unsaid by GOP leaders — for weeks. “And then whatever happens in the election cycle, in December, this body will come back and pass an omnibus spending bill.”
For weeks, Higgins — the author of Johnson’s original proposal — refused to acknowledge that very outcome. But he now finds himself resigned to the reality that many conservatives feared: a stopgap spending deal to set up a larger compromise between Democrats and Republicans that will increase government spending and be signed into law by Joe Biden.
Other Republicans saw this maneuver coming for weeks, and they warned that Johnson was only putting a doomed bill on the House floor so he could create the need to negotiate with Democrats. Rep. Thomas Massie dubbed the move “failure theater.” And while it was the conservative detractors who didn’t support Johnson’s spending plan on Wednesday who may have ironically forced the speaker into the waiting arms of Democrats, Massie turned out to be correct that Johnson would eventually settle on passing a spending bill primarily with the support of the other party.
At least, that appears to be the plan.
Johnson still hasn’t officially moved forward with the new CR, which is expected to include a number of side deals with Democrats and not just extend current spending. But for a man who insisted there was no “plan B” on government funding until plan A failed, Johnson’s deputies appear to be moving awfully quick.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole and the ranking Democrat, Rosa DeLauro, are reportedly already haggling over the specific date that the CR will go until: Dec. 13 or Dec. 20. (Cole says he’d prefer Dec. 13.)
“Discussions are already underway between the four corners,” Appropriations member Rep. Mark Amodei said of a December CR, which he expects will be finished Monday after leadership conversations take place over the weekend.
Another senior appropriator, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, told NOTUS that Johnson always supported a three-month resolution. Fielding pressure from the conference, Diaz-Balart said Johnson pivoted to the six-month plan that included proof of citizenship voter registration requirements. A spokesperson for the speaker disputed that characterization and reinforced that the speaker had been working on the six-month plus SAVE Act plan from the beginning.
No one on the Appropriations Committee ever supported a CR that lasted longer than December, Diaz-Balart told NOTUS in an interview in Spanish.
That’s not quite how Johnson is framing his efforts. He maintains that Wednesday’s failed vote was a worthwhile exercise. “I ran the right play last night,” Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “As I said over and over, we had two objectives: fund the government, secure our elections.”
“Last night’s legislation would have done both,” he added. “I was disappointed that it didn’t get across the goal line. So now, I mean, we go back to the playbook.”
Like most of Washington, D.C., Rep. Dan Crenshaw knew yesterday’s vote would be a bust, acknowledging “an inevitability to the budget process that I think many more members do well to understand and accept.”
“You got to check the box,” Crenshaw said. “You had to, like, check off, ‘Hey, we tried this. Didn’t work.’ So, I understand his position on that. Gonna have to go down a list of options. That’s not crazy to do.”
But to hear a fiery Rep. Chip Roy tell it, it’s precisely that kind of thinking that was the problem all along — and it’s the reason he thinks Republicans have failed to deliver conservative wins this term.
Although Roy generally opposes CRs, he saw promise in Johnson’s original plan: a six-month CR with the SAVE Act — the proof of citizenship requirements — attached. Now he thinks Republicans have squandered their one shot at leverage with the Senate.
“It’s a mistake,” Roy said of the new plan. “It is also the direct consequence of certain folks wanting to choose the purity highway straight to hell. You’re gonna get a CR to December. Congratulations. You bought it. You own it.”
While Roy acknowledged that the process was starting to play out as Johnson’s detractors predicted, he blamed them.
“They wanted to be political Nostradamus, and say, ‘I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen,’” Roy said of the 14 Republicans who voted no — and two Republicans who voted present — on Johnson’s plan. “Well, no shit. That’s what’s going to happen when you kill it in the cradle.”
Even if there are some other government funding permutations Johnson could try to put on the floor — for example, a three-month plan with the SAVE Act — he couldn’t afford to dillydally for long. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing to take matters into his own hands. Before the Senate skipped town on Thursday, Schumer laid the groundwork for procedural votes on a CR early next week.
In the meantime, conservatives who were willing to vote for Johnson’s CR when it included the SAVE Act are now turning their back on Johnson. Rep. Ralph Norman — who backed the original proposal despite generally opposing CRs — told NOTUS he hopes the clean bill is “dead on arrival.”
But Johnson doesn’t need Norman to keep the government open. He will rely — as he has the entirety of his speakership — on a coalition of moderate Republicans and almost all Democrats.
Johnson will, however, need the likes of Norman to hang on to his speakership next Congress.
And Norman isn’t happy. Like Donald Trump, Norman has said he’d rather see the government shut down than pass a CR like the one coming down the pike.
Hard-line Republican skeptics will surely add a December CR to their running tally of Johnson’s indiscretions. The question is whether Johnson can convince them that he did everything he could to avoid an outcome that Johnson himself has acknowledged is less than ideal, that he actually fought.
As Higgins put it, “Sometimes a victory is in a fight.”
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Riley Rogerson, Oriana González and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS.