House to consider Mike Johnson’s unconventional bill to avert shutdown
The House of Representatives will on Monday begin considering an unconventional proposal by the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, to extend government funding into the new year and ward off a shutdown that would occur this weekend, but it is unclear if the measure has the support to pass.
Johnson’s bill is the latest attempt to resolve a complex standoff over Washington’s spending that has pitted hardline Republicans against their moderate colleagues and the Democratic minority in Congress’s lower chamber, and also contributed to the chain of events that led to Kevin McCarthy’s overthrow as speaker of the House in October.
The US government’s authorization to spend money expires at the end of the day on Friday, and Johnson, a rightwing lawmaker who the GOP elected as House speaker last month to replace McCarthy, unveiled over the weekend a proposal to keep some agencies functioning through 19 January and others through 2 February while long-term spending bills are negotiated.
Congress has in recent decades enacted dozens of such short-term funding bills – known as continuing resolutions (CR) – but Johnson’s is unique because it proposes two different deadlines for the funding to run out.
“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement.
The White House immediately panned the proposal, which does not include funding for military assistance to Ukraine or Israel that Joe Biden is pushing Congress to approve – issues Johnson says he wants to handle in separate legislation.
“This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns – full stop,” the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said. “With just days left before an extreme Republican shutdown – and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader – House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.”
Democrats, who control the Senate, gave the proposal a warmer welcome. In a speech on the floor, their leader Chuck Schumer said: “I am pleased that Speaker Johnson seems to be moving in our direction by advancing a CR that does not include the highly partisan cuts that Democrats have warned against.” Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, said he would support the bill.
But before it lands in that chamber, Johnson’s proposal will have to make it through the House. The rules committee will hold a key procedural hearing on the bill on Monday afternoon, and, if they move it forward, a source familiar with the legislation says the full House is expected to vote on the bill on Tuesday.
Already, it has run into opposition from some conservative lawmakers, who say Johnson has proposed a “clean” CR that lacks the deep spending cuts they want to see come with any such bill.
“It’s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,” tweeted Texas Republican Chip Roy.
Scott Perry, the chair of rightwing Freedom Caucus, is also against it, saying he would “not support a status quo that fails to acknowledge fiscal irresponsibility, and changes absolutely nothing while emboldening a do-nothing Senate and a fiscally illiterate president”.
At their current numbers, Republicans can afford to lose only three of their own members before they will have to rely on Democratic support to get legislation passed. That is a perilous calculus for Johnson, as McCarthy was ousted days after Democrats helped him pass a measure he proposed to prevent a government shutdown through 17 November.
Already, powerful Democrats are signaling opposition to the speaker’s bill. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, objected to the lack of funding for Israel and Ukraine in the measure, and argued the Departments of Defense and State need long-term funding, not a twomonth stopgap.
“It is irresponsible to kick the can down the road for several months – keeping government services frozen – and hope that our challenges go away. We are nowhere closer to a full-year funding agreement than we were at the end of September,” DeLauro said. “Congress must avoid a shutdown and pass a CR that facilitates enacting full-year spending bills and emergency assistance as soon as possible.”
In a letter to colleagues, top Democrats, including the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, expressed similar concerns, but said “we are carefully evaluating the proposal set forth by Republican leadership and discussing it with members”.
The Florida Republican Carlos Giménez acknowledged to Fox Business Network that “the dynamics are the same” for Johnson as they were for McCarthy, but predicted the speaker’s bill would receive support from both parties.
“Even though you’ll get some Republicans not to vote for it, just like what happened under Kevin McCarthy where you had a bunch of Republicans not vote for a clean CR, most if not all, Democrats did vote for it, because the last thing we want to see is a government shutdown,” he said.