It’s been a rough seven weeks for new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Republicans grumbled last week at Mr. Johnson’s indecisiveness about navigating GOP divisions about renewing a crucial government spy power in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which ultimately ended with the speaker yanking two competing bills from the House floor.
And some lawmakers fear the Louisiana Republican is receiving “bad counsel” from his staff on how to proceed with other key legislation, including a major defense policy bill that split the conference but ultimately passed.
Despite his inexperience and initial stumbles, Republicans are in no hurry to replace Mr. Johnson, 51, who was elected speaker on Oct. 25 after a rogue group of conservatives voted with all Democrats to remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, struggled with the same difficulties leading a fractured, tiny majority despite his years in top leadership posts. The GOP conference is realizing that Mr. Johnson, a hard-right conservative elected to the House just seven years ago, can’t magically unite the conference any better than his predecessor. So, they reason, why throw him out?
“He understands he’s been dealt an incredibly difficult hand of cards, and sometimes we’re going to face legislative problems that simply are not solvable by the end of the week,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, South Dakota Republican, said.
The new speaker has been unable to unite the GOP around individual government spending bills he pledged to pass when he won the speaker job. But he gaveled to passage a resolution opening an impeachment inquiry into President Biden and pushed through one spending bill and some policy legislation, including the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act and a bill aimed at lowering health care costs.
While he missed his goal of passing all 12 government spending bills, Mr. Johnson is claiming credit for extending government funding in two spending packages that expire early next year.
It stops “the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded-up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess,” he boasted.
But punting the measures adds to a cascade of looming deadlines in 2024.
In addition to the temporary spending bills that expire in January and February, the House must grapple with renewing the FISA legislation, which is extended until April 19 in the defense policy bill, as well as funding authority for the Federal Aviation Administration, which expires on March 8.
Republicans worry Mr. Johnson’s tactic of short-term extensions reflects an indecisiveness and difficulty leading the conference that will only get worse next year amid all of the looming deadlines.
“The speaker has to be the quarterback. So you gotta act like a quarterback and get the team on board and call the play. I know he’s figuring it out and I hope for all of our sakes, and for the majority’s sake, he’ll figure it out quickly,” Rep. Jim Banks, Indiana Republican, told The Washington Times.
Mr. Johnson withdrew the two FISA bills after the GOP conference balked at his plan to put them on the floor as competing measures to overhaul the legislation that allows spying on foreigners abroad but sometimes scoops up Americans’ communications, a power enumerated in FISA’s Section 702.
Republicans fumed when Mr. Johnson refused to pick between the two bills and instead pitched a plan to force the conference to battle over them on the House floor.
Supporters of the rewrite of Section 702 authored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said Mr. Johnson erred by overstepping Mr. Jordan, who has been spearheading reforms to the surveillance program to increase transparency and protect civil liberties.
Mr. Jordan’s bill had strong bipartisan support, but Mr. Johnson decided to give a measure authored by the House Intelligence Committee equal weight in a voting duel.
House Republicans who backed the effort to more forcefully reign in the FBI’s and spy agencies’ ability to go after Americans said it was misguided to block Mr. Jordan from a major role in the FISA overhaul.
“I hope that he learns from this misstep and goes back to the drawing board,” Mr. Banks said.
The new speaker doesn’t view his bid to put both FISA bills on the floor as a mistake.
“We have this very important matter to determine and resolve, and you have a lot of different opinions where that is,” Mr. Johnson said.
Other Republicans defended Mr. Johnson’s egalitarian leadership style.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the effort to remove Mr. McCarthy, praised the new speaker for not being the type of leader who will “big-foot decisions.”
Still, some members of the conference say Mr. Johnson has been undermined by “poor counsel” from his inner circle.
“I still believe in his heart that he begins at the same place that I begin my day on,” Rep. Matt Rosendale, Montana Republican, said. “After that, he gets undermined by counsel throughout the day which gets him to make some bad decisions.”
In his final news conference of the year, Mr. Johnson summed up his leadership style.
“Democracy is messy but we have to get it right,” Mr. Johnson said. “We’re the greatest deliberative body in the world and we’ll do our job and do it well. Sometimes it takes more time than we’d like, but we have to get it right.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.