WASHINGTON — Speaker Mike Johnson’s initial plan to avert a government shutdown has run into a wall of Republican opposition as lawmakers from an array of factions in his party balk at a six-month stopgap funding measure that Democrats have already rejected.
Johnson has said he plans to bring up a spending bill this week that would extend federal funding through March 28, which includes a measure that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote. The addition of the voting restriction bill was a nod to the right flank of his conference and an effort to force politically vulnerable Democrats to take a fraught vote.
But his $1.6 trillion proposal was almost immediately met with an outpouring of skepticism by House Republicans as they returned to Washington after a lengthy summer recess. And the political battle lines in the fight hardened Tuesday when former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, ordered members of his party to shut down the government unless they received “absolute assurances on Election Security.”
Still, Republicans were in revolt about Johnson’s plan. Hard-line conservatives, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said they would oppose the legislation because it would extend current spending levels they believe are too high.
The legislation “doesn’t cut spending, and the shiny object attached to it will be dropped like a hot potato before passage,” Massie said, referring to the voting restriction. He added, “I refuse to be a thespian in this failure theater.”
At the same time, Republican defense hawks, including Rep. Mike D. Rogers of Alabama, the chair of the Armed Services Committee, said they opposed the plan because extending current spending levels for such a lengthy period would amount to a cut to military spending, which would otherwise be slated to increase in the coming months.
The House cleared one procedural hurdle Tuesday and agreed to take up the legislation, but its fate was still in doubt. Minutes later, Trump poured gasoline on the situation, urging Republicans to “close it down” if Democrats refused to accept the voting measure.
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump wrote on social media.
The internal divisions were the latest headache for Johnson in a seemingly interminable series of skirmishes over government funding that have dogged him since Republicans took control of the House. Every episode has ended with the same result: passage of a bipartisan spending bill that has angered the right flank of the House Republican conference.
Johnson tried to rally Republicans around the plan during a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol on Tuesday morning.
“I believe we can fund the government responsibly, and I believe that we can do right by the American people and ensure the security of our elections,” Johnson told reporters afterward, calling the struggle over the voting measure “a fight worth having.”
It is against the law for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election, and there is scant evidence that it happens, but Republicans have been pressing the proof of citizenship bill as a necessary step, warning that illegal votes by migrants could sway the election. Democrats have condemned the legislation as xenophobic and warn that its enactment could make it more difficult for eligible voters to register.
Many Republicans emerged from the meeting Tuesday unpersuaded about the spending measure itself, signaling trouble ahead.
And even if Johnson were able to unite his conference around the short-term spending bill, the proposal would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. White House officials said Monday that President Joe Biden would veto the legislation. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, called the plan an “unserious” product.
“We’ve seen this play out time and time again,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday, using the shorthand for a continuing resolution to fund the government as he laid out the situation. “Is it any surprise that the speaker’s purely partisan CR seems to be running into trouble? The answer’s very simple: The House should stop wasting time on a CR proposal that cannot become law.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, refrained from endorsing the House approach, saying Senate Republicans needed to see what the House could pass. But he advised against any move to shut the government down.
“Shutting down the government is always a bad idea, no matter what time,” McConnell said when pressed by reporters about Trump’s position.
Democrats and many Republicans prefer a shorter-term spending bill that would last into early December, allowing time to resolve their fiscal differences but leaving it to Biden and the current Congress — rather than the next president and Congress — to set funding levels for 2025 and beyond.
Johnson has repeatedly decided that he would rather back a bipartisan spending bill, drawing a backlash from House ultraconservatives, than allow the government to shut down. That impulse is likely to prevail again this time, particularly given the rapid approach of the election. House Republicans in tough races that could decide which party controls the chamber have been warning that they could face voter backlash if the government shuts down.
“Playing fast and loose with government on the eve of a national election is not going to be good for our nominee for president,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chair of the Appropriations Committee, said Tuesday. “It’s not going to be good for our prospects for keeping the government functioning while we carry out the most important elections in national history.”
Even some hard-line Republicans nodded to the reality that many of their colleagues were anxious to leave Washington and return to the campaign trail.
“My admonition to our colleagues: Vote on it and go home,” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.
But the political calculation facing Johnson is also more contentious than ever before. Polling indicates that the fight for House control is likely to be exceedingly close, potentially giving Johnson a path to return to power in January — if he can win the support of his unruly conference.
That would require appeasing the restive right flank, who are demanding that Johnson go to bat for them.
“Conservatives like me, we will not vote for a CR unless we know that we have a speaker, a leader that is actually going to go to battle,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who led the effort to depose Johnson earlier this year. “Otherwise, it’s pointless. It’s really a waste of everyone’s time.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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