Speaker, restive members face off
With shrinking majority, Johnson confronts ire from party’s right wing
Less than six months after a faction of House Republicans led a revolt that removed Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, more Republicans are already complaining about the party’s direction and questioning whether his replacement, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is the right person for the job.
The complaints picked up after the House passage Friday of a $1.2 trillion funding bill, and they are familiar ones for the chamber, similar to those that had been lodged against McCarthy, R-Calif.: Both men have relied on Democrats to pass key funding bills in the narrowly divided chamber and bypassed rules to move the legislative process along more quickly when facing key legislative deadlines.
The speed of their disenchantment with Johnson is a reminder of the difficulty of leading the restive Republican caucus, which has been shrinking due to member departures. On Friday, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin announced he would resign next month to join the private sector, leaving Johnson with just one vote to spare to get measures passed on party lines.
At the same time, the Republican Party faces deep divisions over how to handle major policy issues and whether to ever work
with Democrats.
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have already admonished Johnson as a weak leader who they believe does not fight back in negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
“Mike was wrong,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who vehemently opposed his right-flank peers’ effort to oust McCarthy last year, told CNN on Sunday, describing Johnson’s approach to steering a $1.2 trillion funding bill that passed the House 286 to 134 on Friday, with the support of 185 Democrats and 101 Republicans.
The majority of House GOP members — 112 — voted against it, meaning it passed only because of Democratic support, a source of tension for many conservative members.
Johnson, Roy said, did not give House Republicans the 72 hours required by the rules negotiated by the party’s most conservative members to review the measure, which passed the Senate early
Saturday and was swiftly signed by President Joe Biden, averting a partial shutdown of the government.
Roy also insisted the speaker should have forced a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels while House Republicans continued pushing for further border funding and budget cuts in the final bills.
Johnson, for his part, called the agreement passed Friday “the best achievable outcome in a divided government,” pointing out conservative policy wins.
The package funds about three-quarters of the federal government for the next six months while also raising military pay, eliminating U.S. funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and bolstering security at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Despite the sharp criticism, Republicans so far seem reluctant to try to push Johnson out of out of office like they did with McCarthy, potentially giving Johnson
time to shore up his support.
Before the funding package passed the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a far-right member, filed a motion to vacate the speakership over opposition to the bill, the same legislative procedure used to remove McCarthy.
Over the weekend, Republicans appeared dismissive of Greene’s effort, signaling they were not yet compelled to remove him from the speakership. Lawmakers said the calculus to consider whether to remove Johnson now is markedly different from what it was when more than 200 Democrats and eight Republicans voted to oust McCarthy last year.