House GOP feels deja vu as new funding fight ends with no wins

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a quote from Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio).

House Republicans are feeling dejected as they prepare to kick yet another shutdown deadline down the road without securing major wins, an outcome some blame on their own dysfunction.

Once again, even though they have the House majority, Republicans will rely on dozens of Democrats to pass a three-month funding extension.

They can’t pass the bill with just GOP votes because of opposition from hard-line conservatives. And because they have to rely on House Democrats to move forward, they hold zero leverage with the Democratic Senate.

Wednesday’s vote will be the final legislative action in the House before the election, and it will be symbolic of the disputes that have dogged the House GOP conference over the past 21 months. It has contributed to a pair of Speaker fights, multiple embarrassing failed votes on the floor and infighting that has spilled into the public view.

“If you’ve been here more than like, a year, it’s all the same thing over and over again,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), facing pressure from his right flank and former President Trump, staged a vote last week on a six-month stopgap paired with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections.

That package was never going to muster enough support to become law given opposition from Senate Democrats and the White House, which noted that it is already illegal for non-U.S. citizens to vote in elections and argued the law could burden already eligible voters. But Republicans plowed ahead, hoping to increase their leverage with Senate Democrats.

Fourteen House Republicans, however, thwarted the strategy when they voted down the six-month stopgap paired with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, dealing a blow to Johnson and undermining his ability to secure conservative wins. The 14 lawmakers included hard-line conservatives outraged at the lack of spending cuts, and defense hawks concerned about the impact a six-month measure would have at the Pentagon.

Some Republicans — including those who in the past have been rabble-rousers on the right flank — are now aiming their fire at those hard-liners for torpedoing Johnson’s opening salvo, which, they say, led to the less-than-desired stopgap until Dec. 20.

“They did try, in their defense, to do the SAVE Act first,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said of House leadership, “but there were people that voted against that that wanted an omnibus.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a leading proponent of the SAVE Act, staked his opposition to the Dec. 20 stopgap before launching a jab at the 14 GOP lawmakers for foiling the Speaker’s strategy. Their efforts, Roy said, are influencing the rather muted anger conservative Republicans are exhibiting.

“I’m strongly opposed to putting a three-month [continuing resolution] on the floor. I don’t think we should do that. But I will say that when people who criticize that were the ones that created the environment that led to that, then it’s harder to get animated,” Roy said.

“Certain members of the conference were wrong to bind his hands to be able to have a strategy we could go fight for,” he later added.

Johnson argued Tuesday that the three-month stopgap, even if it was not what Republicans wanted, prevented the Senate from stuffing it with extra funding that the House GOP would dislike more.

But adding insult to injury, Johnson was forced to change the process for bringing the legislation to the floor after Republican opposition threatened to sink a procedural vote. That has forced Johnson to bring the bill up Wednesday under a suspension of House rules, cementing the GOP’s need for Democratic help.

Despite those setbacks, many Republicans are holding back attacks on Johnson, recognizing the difficult situation he is in.

“Speaker Johnson’s doing his best with like, a zero-vote majority, you know, and fighting against this huge machine that is D.C. in a presidential election year,” said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who was the lead sponsor of the six-month continuing resolution that failed last week.

Higgins, nonetheless, said he will likely vote no on the three-month stopgap.

Wednesday’s vote does raise questions about Johnson’s prospects of remaining atop the House GOP in the next Congress. He already survived one attempt to oust him from the Speakership, spearheaded by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), after winning the gavel following last year’s whirlwind Speaker saga.

Members overwhelmingly recognize that Johnson’s political future will be most impacted by whether Republicans win the House, and by how many seats. But his handling of legislative matters such as spending — which animate GOP antagonists in the House the most — is also important.

One of the biggest fears of hard-line conservatives — and why they were pushing for a six-month timeline — is that the Dec. 20 shutdown deadline will tee up a massive end-of-year omnibus spending package that will be loaded with priorities of the lame-duck Biden administration.

Johnson on Tuesday promised that the House would not approve a “Christmas omnibus.”

“We have broken the Christmas omni, and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said, also ruling out any kind of “minibus” that funds great gobs of government by combining several of the 12 regular appropriations bills.

“We don’t want any buses,” he added. “We’re not going to do any buses, OK?” 

But some Republicans have doubts that Johnson can fulfill that promise.

“I trust the Speaker when he says that, and I’m glad he’s saying that, and he’s right to say that,” Roy said, later adding, “I’m a little skeptical; history bears out that a December spending fight usually doesn’t go very well for the American people.”

“We’ll see what happens this December,” Roy said. “I’m hopeful that the Speaker means what he says on that, I believe him when he says it, but we gotta go see what happens.”

Ultimately, some Republicans argued the root of the frustration lies in the House Republican culture of hardheaded members that exists within the razor-thin GOP majority.

“You got purists that won’t vote for anything unless it’s perfect, and you got kind of the other end that won’t fight to accomplish anything,” said Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), who was kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this year partly because of his public criticism of others in the group.