Morale on Capitol Hill is low as House Republicans leaders are scrambling to negotiate a new government funding strategy to pass a short-term stopgap funding bill ahead of today’s midnight deadline.
During a closed-door huddle with their members, House GOP leaders reportedly laid out possible options to their members about how to proceed. The first option is to pass an amended version of the 116-page government funding bill that Speaker Mike Johnson failed to muscle through last night that would fund the government through mid-March, a one-year extension of the farm bill, and $110 in disaster aid, while also nixing the most recent bill’s provision that would suspend the debt ceiling for two years. Johnson would have to push this through the lower chamber through a rules suspension vote, which requires a two-thirds vote to pass.
Another option is to break up the bill into separate components and hold different votes on a clean continuing resolution to fund the government through mid-March, pass billions in disaster relief, and give emergency funding to farmers. Either of these strategies would punt the debt ceiling problem into the next Congress, which president-elect Donald Trump has advised Republicans against.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” on Truth Social around 1 A.M. Friday. “Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
Friday’s government funding negotiations are coming together after a chaotic week on Capitol Hill that is testing Johnson’s negotiating prowess and hold on his own gavel before lawmakers head home for the holidays.
Rank-and-file swing-district Republican members are expressing extreme frustration over Johnson’s leadership style and his decision to keep members in the dark about leadership’s next moves.
“We’re expecting votes this morning. So y’all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan,” Johnson told reporters Friday morning, declining to elaborate and keeping his own conference on edge as the clock ticked toward the day’s midnight funding deadline.
“I don’t know what’s going on and that’s really part of the problem,” Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.) told reporters on Friday. “The fact that there is zero communication from leadership to the membership, and it’s very frustrating. It’s something that needs to change before January 3 here.”
“We need a clear understanding of how we’re going to do things next session because what’s happening right now is completely unacceptable,” she added.
Biden has been largely absent from the negotiating process as Washington teetered toward a shutdown on the octogenarian lame duck’s watch.
Any government funding resolution must surpass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold before it gets to President Joe Biden’s desk.
House GOP leaders had to start government funding negotiations from square one Wednesday evening after Elon Musk, Trump, and hardline fiscal hawks torpedoed Johnson’s initial 1,547-page bipartisan deal over concerns that the legislation was stacked with a suite of costly and unrelated policy provisions, such as half a billion for childcare and a cost-of-living increase for congressional lawmakers.
Trump and vice president-elect J.D. Vance tried on Thursday to rally Republicans around Johnson’s second strategy – a 116-page bill that would fund the government through March, suspend the debt limit for two years, and pass billions in disaster relief and emergency aid to farmers. House GOP leaders tried unsuccessfully to muscle the legislation through the lower chamber through a rules suspension process that required two-thirds support to pass. The bill failed in a 174-235 vote with one member voting “present,” marking yet another example of Johnson’s inability to count votes and read his own conference.
An almost entirely united Democratic caucus — 197 members — voted against the measure over concerns that the second bill completely overhauled the buffet of spending provisions Democrats had agreed on before they were iced out of negotiations ahead of the second bill.
And a whopping 38 House Republicans also voted “no” on Johnson’s Trump-endorsed 116-page bill Thursday evening over fiscal concerns with the legislation’s spending provisions and two-year debt ceiling suspension provision.
Trump has spent the past 24 hours placing preemptive blame on Democrats ahead of a possible shutdown. “If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
Johnson is on thin ice as he and other lawmakers prepare to head home for the holidays. His weakened negotiating position after this week’s government funding fiasco comes two weeks before House GOP lawmakers return to Washington and decide whether to keep him in his current post.
Members like Representative Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) – a perennial thorn in Johnson’s side – continue to flirt publicly with opposing Johnson for speaker next year, though it’s possible that a brief recess will cool intra-conference tensions and give lawmakers some breathing room they need to rally behind him.
The Louisianan’s fate may also be in the hands of Trump, who helped him stave off threats to his speakership in the spring and has continued to project support for his hold on the gavel. If that changes, Johnson will be in a tight spot.
“I don’t know how this is going to impact it,” Representative Eric Burlison (R., Mo.), who voted against Johnson’s 116-page government funding measure, told NR in the U.S. Capitol Thursday evening. “I think at the end of the day if Trump is backing Johnson, he’ll be speaker.”
This is a developing story.