BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: Speaker Johnson’s Next Move in Spending Fight

It’s back to the drawing board for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

On Wednesday, the House failed to pass the continuing resolution spending bill, with the SAVE Act attached, that would have funded the federal government beyond the end of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and through March.

Wednesday evening’s vote failed 202-220. Three Democrats—Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, Jared Golden of Maine, and Donald Davis of North Carolina—joined 199 Republicans in voting for the stopgap spending bill. Perez’s and Golden’s seats are among the most vulnerable for Democrats in the upcoming election cycle.

Despite those Democratic votes, Republican defections—14 “no” votes and two “present” votes—ultimately resulted in the measure’s failure.

“Now we go back to the playbook. We’ll draw up another play, and we’ll come up with a solution,” Johnson said after the continuing resolution failed. “I’m already talking to colleagues about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation. And we’ll get right to it.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was one of the Republicans who voted “present” on Johnson’s continuing resolution. “The [Safeguard American Voter Eligibility] Act is a good thing that seeks to prevent illegals from voting, but it’s not worth keeping our country on a collision course with insolvency,” Massie wrote in a tweet, explaining why he withheld his support from Johnson’s plan. “If the speaker would put a one-year CR on the floor instead of a six-month CR, an automatic 1% cut to spending would kick in on April 30th. We should do that, but too many Republicans in Congress don’t want to cut spending.”

Johnson is left with little time and few options. Just 12 days remain before government funding runs out in fiscal 2024 and a government shutdown ensues—a scenario especially dangerous politically on the eve of a presidential election.

Now that the six-month continuing resolution with the SAVE Act attached has failed, Johnson could double down and attempt to attach some sort of immigration or election integrity concession to the continuing resolution that’s popular enough with the GOP conference to pass through the House on Republican votes alone.

The more likely scenario, however, is pivoting to a “clean” continuing resolution with a March deadline, thereby empowering the next Congress to determine government spending levels and make government spending a major issue in the final weeks of the election cycle.

The rightward flank of Johnson’s party—some of whom reject ever voting for a continuing resolution on principle and others who care more about passing the SAVE Act than funding the government—likely would be very unhappy with that scenario. The speaker would have to rely on a coalition of mostly Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans to pass the government funding mechanism out of the House.

Yet another instance where the speaker has to rely on mostly Democratic votes to get legislation out of the House could severely harm his prospects of continuing to lead the House GOP moving forward.

It has been reported that Johnson is talking with former President Donald Trump on the House GOP’s next steps.

Nevertheless, even Johnson’s detractors in this scenario might be pleased to avoid another Christmastime omnibus negotiated by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has once again put Johnson in a three-on-one situation vis-à-vis the other major congressional leaders, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

“One thing you cannot have is a government shutdown. It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election, because certainly we’d get the blame,” McConnell told members of the media Tuesday.

“I’m for whatever avoids a government shutdown, and that’ll ultimately end up, obviously, being a discussion between the [Senate] Democratic leader and the speaker of the House,” McConnell added.

Schumer was quick to make use of McConnell’s talking points in a Sept. 17 speech on the Senate floor. “I urge [Speaker Johnson] to drop his current plan, and to work together to reach a bipartisan agreement with the other leaders—Leader McConnell, Leader Jeffries, and myself, as well as the White House. We do not have time to spare,” he said.

With Johnson’s hand seriously weakened, Schumer has decided to play his. The New York Democrat is taking the first procedural step toward passing a mechanism to fund the government. “I will file cloture on a legislative vehicle that will enable us to prevent a Trump shutdown, in the event Speaker Johnson does not work with us in a bipartisan, bicameral manner,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.

But if Schumer has his way, the next funding deadline would be December, not March, which would mean the current Congress could seek to hamstring a future Republican House, Senate, and Trump administration from enacting policy changes once in office.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., was among the members who voted for Johnson’s continuing resolution with the SAVE Act attached. In an email to The Daily Signal, Norman wrote, “the worst thing we can do is a CR through December and give the checkbook directly to Schumer for a year-end, lame duck omnibus.”

“Right now everything is up in the air,” Norman added. “We will see how strong Speaker Johnson will stand against the Senate, right up against a possible government shutdown.”

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