After Speaker Mike Johnson’s government funding gambit fell apart on Wednesday, Republicans were quickly and quietly coalescing behind a new plan: the old plan, but less.
On the Democratic side, most of the consternation over Johnson’s funding package has been over including the SAVE Act — a proposal requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. But for some Republicans, the major problem with Johnson’s legislation was the timeframe — six months, pushing the next government funding deadline to March, when there will be a new president.
Democrats want a shorter extension, but so do many Republicans, reasoning that it’d be harmful to the military to keep the Pentagon at current levels for another half year.
While that perspective was mostly contained to the defense hawks in the Republican conference, GOP leaders know they can’t pass a partisan government funding extension without Armed Services Republicans, requiring a change of course.
“We’re gonna get Dec. 15,” Rep. Rich McCormick, an Armed Services member, said Wednesday night. “That’s what we’re gonna settle on, and it’ll probably be a clean CR.”
Whether it’s a “clean” CR — basically just an extension of current levels with no strings attached — is an open question, at least at this point in the negotiations. But a December deadline sets Congress up for one of its favorite holiday gifts: a Christmastime omnibus.
Typically, the pressure of lawmakers wanting to leave Washington with their colleagues in favor of spending the holidays with their families is enough of an impetus to convince them to muscle through a catchall funding bill.
It’s that exact dynamic that conservatives wanted to avoid, knowing that many Republicans won’t be willing to stay in town in late December to address a government shutdown and will instead join Democrats to support a massive omnibus bill.
“I understand people don’t like to get jammed right up against Christmas, but we didn’t get the votes for that,” House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole told reporters Wednesday night, referring to Johnson’s original plan.
Now, Johnson looks poised to reduce the time span of the CR and see if that does the trick.
The big question now is whether Johnson will proceed with the intermediary step of keeping the SAVE Act as part of his CR gambit, seeing if he can pass his package with just a shorter timeline, or whether he’ll dispense with the theatrics and accept what many Republicans and Democrats have always thought was inevitable: a clean CR passed by some Republicans and almost all of the House’s Democrats.
The endgame is straight out of the Johnson playbook — already well-established in his 11-month tenure — and in the decades of experience Congress has in kicking the government funding can down the road.
“It’ll be the same playbook that we’ve seen occur this entire Congress, where the Senate is going to jam the House because we’re not willing to stand on principle and stand strong on leadership,” Rep. Greg Steube told NOTUS. “We’ll eat a CR because all the Democrats will vote for it, and a little less than half of our conference will vote for it.”
Steube is right that the Democratic Senate will almost certainly reject any partisan policy riders to a government funding bill. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to kill anything but a simple funding extension, already dooming Johnson’s idea of pairing a CR with the proof of citizenship requirement to register voters.
The speaker has seemed to think that if the House could just get his bill to the Senate, Democrats would cave.
At least, that’s the idea. You combine the CR with a bill that Democrats say is superfluous — because noncitizens already can’t vote — and you put House Democrats to a tough choice that can be used against them in their elections, and in turn, you put Senate Democrats to a question: Are you willing to shut down the government over preventing the SAVE Act?
But as Rep. Max Miller acknowledged to NOTUS on Wednesday night, when Schumer says no, he usually means it.
“To his credit,” Miller said, “he’s never put anything on that floor.”
And yet, Johnson hasn’t backed down — at least not yet and not fully.
President Donald Trump told Republicans on Tuesday that they should shut down the government if Democrats don’t cede to their demands on the SAVE Act. Johnson is trying to avoid that outcome, reasoning that a shutdown hurts vulnerable Republicans a lot more than Democrats.
But it’s that thinking which has led many conservatives to believe Johnson is unwilling to “fight” for GOP wins, even if he’s just trying to prevent GOP losses.
A number of conservatives have taken to accusing Johnson of, in effect, putting on a big show, trying to illustrate to Republicans that they can’t pass their bill and, ultimately, they have to accept what Democrats demand: a clean CR.
“We’re gonna get a clean CR, but without all the fake fighting,” Rep. Thomas Massie told NOTUS.
“There’s a lot of members that are frustrated,” Steube said. “Depending on what the majority looks like in January or after November, I certainly think it’s going to be challenging for him to get 218 on the floor.”
Rep. Cory Mills is one of those fuming. He’s been whipping as a “no” on Johnson’s CR plan since Congress returned, even with the added carrot of the SAVE Act.
“I’m not willing to go ahead and tie the noose further around the American people’s neck with economic failures when we know we’re gonna spend more this year,” Mills said. “We’re gonna spend more this year in our interest payments than our entire national defense.”
Mills — like the bill’s other detractors within the GOP — acknowledged that some version of a clean CR will pass the House and fund the government into the coming months, even if it’s something he hates. But Mills, if his track record is any indication, won’t be helping Johnson out.
Nor will his close friend Rep. Eli Crane. Like much of the GOP conference, however, the Freedom Caucus member falls into a slightly different category of headache for Johnson. Crane has said he’d consider voting for Johnson’s stop-gap plan if it included the SAVE Act.
But in the current configuration, Crane is a firm no — and he’s increasingly disappointed in Johnson.
Crane said he could vote for a CR if Republicans were “willing to fight for something righteous.” But at the moment, with all the maneuvering already taking place, “I just don’t see that.”
After three days of flailing, the conference appears ready to haltingly accept the inevitable. While plenty are condemning Johnson for the near-certain outcome, an unexpected ally has come to the speaker’s defense.
Rep. Chip Roy — who back in January took a similar political tack — said Johnson’s budget “gimmicks” might get him removed from the speakership.
“If we end up with a CR into December, then it will just be another year in Washington,” Roy, a sponsor of the SAVE Act, said. “I don’t think it’s the best place to be.”
“But,” he continued, “when some members of the conference bind the hands of the speaker, then that’s where you go.”
“I find it ironic, but it is what it is,” Roy said, adding that some of his “self-described conservative friends are gagging on a gnat here.”
Still, other self-described conservatives were celebrating that they had stopped Johnson’s plan.
“It died,” Massie said. “That was my goal this week, was to kill that stupid thing.”
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John T. Seward, who is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, and Reese Gorman, who is a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this report.