Speaker Mike Johnson pushed forward with his doomed bid to avert a government shutdown on Wednesday, despite clear signs that the legislation was unpalatable to both conservatives in his own party as well as Democrats who control the upper chamber of Congress.
The House voted early Wednesday evening on a continuing resolution to keep the government open laden with giveaways to the conservative right. Those included spending cuts and a piece of legislation stapled to the broader package aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting in federal elections — something that is already illegal. Johnson of course, admitted this in a recent interview — and has evaded acknowledging that Donald Trump’s claims of massive numbers of undocumented immigrants voting are false.
“This is the play we’re running,” the Speaker told The Hill this week. “I’ll be working around the clock to try to get it done.”
His failure was evident as the vote occurred shortly before 7pm on Wednesday. The yeas trailed the nays by 18 votes, with two members voting present.
The speaker said he was “disappointed” after the vote failed, but refused to criticize his own strategy.
That strategy has been unclear from the beginning. His party headed into the vote secure in the knowledge that the bill as written would not pass the Democrat-controlled Senate, nor would it be signed into law by President Joe Biden, who issued a statement insisting that he would veto the legislation if it reached his desk. And Trump, ever eager to throw a wrench into the machinery, wrote on Truth Social this week that Republicans should walk away from any discussions around passing a CR that do not include passing the SAVE Act, Johnson’s piece of tagalong legislation on noncitizen voting — a nonstarter for Democrats.
As a result, the final vote included defections from Johnson’s own party on top of near-uniform opposition from his Democratic rivals. The three exceptions included Maine’s Jared Golden, who previously said he’d vote for the bill. Fourteen Republicans voted with their Democratic rivals against it.
The government is set to begin a partial shutdown of services in October if a deal to pass a funding bill is not cut before then. Democrats are insisting upon passage of a bill that keeps funding for all agencies at existing levels, minus the Secret Service, which they say needs a funding surge in the wake of two attempted assassinations of former President Donald Trump in as many months. Some conservatives oppose this, citing the agency’s operational failures and claiming that the Secret Service doesn’t deserve extended funding because of them. Others are unhappy that the bill does not increase funding for the Pentagon as well.
Johnson now has less than two weeks to make that deadline. On Tuesday, he said he hadn’t been having any conversations about alternative strategies for passing a funding bill.
In the Senate, lawmakers remain at work on a stopgap bill that would keep the government open through mid-December, teeing up another fight before the holiday recess. Johnson’s bill, by comparison, would fund the government for six months at his reduced levels.
“Congress has an immediate obligation to do two things: responsibly fund the federal government, and ensure the security of our elections,” Johnson said in a statement the day prior to the vote. “Because we owe this to our constituents, we will move forward on Wednesday with a vote on the six-month CR with the SAVE Act attached. I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this country rightfully demand and deserve – prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections.”
But he has failed to win over his party’s most vocal members in the House, making Wednesday’s vote all the more confusing of a strategy — and one that, in the end, may give more power to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic caucus. Johnson has, in the past, relied on Jeffries and his caucus to provide votes for measures to keep the government open over opposition from his own party. That was the path trodden by former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before he was ousted by a conservative rebellion in the fall of 2023.
So far, Johnson has escaped that same fate in part due to the aversion lawmakers have shown to throwing the House back into the weeks of inaction and chaos McCarthy’s ouster began last year. The inability of the Republican caucus to settle on his replacement paralyzed the chamber for weeks.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the Republicans who has come out against Johnson’s latest ploy to cut a government funding deal, attempted to lead a second ouster of the Speaker’s chair aimed at removing Johnson earlier this year. But the bid failed after Democrats rallied to Johnson’s defense.
“Johnson will NOT commit to standing up against the Democrats in a shutdown fight and will allow passage of a clean CR in order to fund the government because he believes a government shutdown will be blamed on Republicans and will hurt their elections,” Greene said on Tuesday. “Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting.”