Johnson faces crossroads with no good options in spending fight

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is at a critical crossroads in the charged debate over federal spending, confronting few options to prevent a government shutdown — and all of them with risks.

The funding fight is the last major legislative challenge facing Johnson before this year’s elections, but it’s been snarled not only by the internal tensions within his own feuding conference, but also his sometimes-competing goals of thwarting a shutdown in two weeks, winning control of the House in November and keeping the Speaker’s gavel next year.

Johnson’s initial strategy of passing a conservative stopgap spending bill through the House, as leverage in the coming negotiations with Senate Democrats, dissolved quickly last week when GOP leaders failed to rally enough Republican support to pass it. 

Now, a week closer to an Oct. 1 shutdown, the Speaker can either forge ahead in search of the elusive support for that Republican bill, which paired a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with a Trump-backed bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, or he can shift gears and begin working on a shorter-term “clean” funding package, without the new election rules, that Democrats are demanding — bipartisan buy-in that will be necessary for any bill to become law.

The first route raises the risks of a government shutdown — and the likelihood that Republicans would be blamed for the impasse less than two months before elections in which the House is up for grabs.

The second option risks blowback from hard-line conservatives in Johnson’s GOP conference, as well as former President Trump, which could undermine the Speaker’s chances of keeping the gavel if the House does remain in Republican hands next year.

The combination of factors leaves Johnson with an unenviable hand, and how he plays it this week could have wide-ranging implications for both the outcome of the elections and the future of his own political career.

“I suspect — I can’t get inside his head — but he understands that to save his job he’s got to put the majority at risk. To save the majority, he’s got to put his job at risk,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) said. 

Johnson, for his part, is keeping his cards close to his vest.

As the House returns to Washington on Tuesday following a long recess weekend, the Speaker has not detailed how he plans to proceed. But he’s suggesting he may take another try at the partisan path after last week’s fruitless attempt.

“We have a responsibility to fund the government. And we have a responsibility to ensure that the upcoming election is safe, fair, and secure. And so I attach the SAVE Act to the CR and we’re working through, having family conversations about the best route to get all that done,” Johnson said Monday morning on “Fox & Friends.” “I’m optimistic we can do both things.”

But if the past is prologue, achieving both goals will be a tall task.

Johnson was forced to yank a scheduled vote on his CR-plus-SAVE Act last week as it appeared doomed in the face of opposition from several corners in the House GOP conference.

Deficit hawks rejected levels of spending they deemed too high; moderates were wary of having a shutdown threat so close to Election Day; and defense hawks balked at the notion of freezing Pentagon spending for so long.

Those defense-minded lawmakers are calling for a stopgap measure that will push spending into the postelection, lame-duck session, which would lend Congress roughly three months to work out a bipartisan deal on 2025 spending, to include an increase for the Pentagon and other domestic programs. Democrats are urging the same short-term approach. 

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, has led the opposition to the six-month timeline among defense hawks, announcing that he will vote against any stopgap that goes past the end of this calendar year.

“If it goes past Dec. 31, I’m not voting for it,” Rogers said last week.

That position, however, runs in direct contrast with the members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who are pushing for a stopgap to run into early next year to avoid a sprawling, end-of-the-year omnibus package.

“We need something else,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus member, said last week when asked if the funding process will inevitably end with a three-month stopgap. “Why open the checkbook to Chuck Schumer in December? Doesn’t need to happen.”

The clashing interests within the House GOP have raised the prospects that any spending bill capable of winning bipartisan support might have to originate in the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says he has no intention of shutting down the government. 

That scenario would put some distance between Johnson and the final product — and might insulate him from some conservative attacks. But it would also leave the Speaker open to charges that he allowed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to dictate the terms of the debate.

Complicating Johnson’s decision, Trump has jumped headfirst into the fight, urging Republicans to shut down the government if Democrats reject the election rule changes, as they’re vowing to do. 

In a post on Truth Social, the former president said Republicans on Capitol Hill “SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET.”

Trump’s entreaty prompted a quick reply from McConnell, who suggested Republicans should not heed the strategic advice of the former president. 

“A government shutdown is always a bad idea — at any time,” McConnell responded. 

As lawmakers await Johnson’s next move in the funding fight, some are encouraging him to put the CR-plus-SAVE Act on the floor for a vote, despite the heavy headwinds it faces. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), the chair of the House Administration Committee, told “Sunday Morning Futures” this weekend, “I am reasonably confident that we are going to bring it to the floor and we will have the votes.”

“I think we have an opportunity when we come back next week to actually put it on the floor,” Steil added. “I think we have an opportunity to pass the legislation that the Speaker has put forward and jam the United States Senate to both secure the election and keep the government open, such that we win the election and have an opportunity to get our spending in line in Washington, D.C.”

In the same interview, however, Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.), who has said he will vote against Johnson’s gambit, reiterated his opposition to the package and pushed the Senate to take up the SAVE Act and the House GOP’s border bill independently, showing just how difficult it will be for the Speaker to get his opening bid over the finish line.

“Adding more debt will cause more dollars to be printed, more inflation, and the middle class and lower class will get wiped out,” Mills said. “So I’m going to take the responsibility. Shut the government down or shut the border down and protect our elections.”