The House rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s combo six-month stopgap spending extension and election security measure Wednesday, sending leadership back to the drawing board on a plan to stave off a partial government shutdown next month.
The 202-220 vote marked a predictable defeat for Johnson, R-La., on a bill that alienated most Democrats and left his own GOP conference divided.
Fourteen Republicans voted against it, more than enough to offset the three Democrats who defected from their party to back the measure: Maine’s Jared Golden, North Carolina’s Don Davis and Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. They are considered three of the most endangered Democratic incumbents this November.
The delayed vote, which was initially planned for last week before getting pulled, also cost leaders a week of negotiating time on a funding extension that is needed by Sept. 30 before the new fiscal year begins. Next Friday is Sept. 27, which is the target date for lawmakers in both chambers to wrap up and head home to campaign.
“We ran the play. It was the best play. It was the right one. And so now we go back to the playbook,” Johnson said after the vote. “We’ll draw up another play, and we’ll come up with a solution. I’m already talking to colleagues about their many ideas. We have time to fix the situation and we’ll get right to it.”
While a Plan B has yet to emerge, Democrats and some GOP appropriators have been advocating a shorter spending extension, through mid-December. Democrats also want a greater number of “anomalies” in the continuing resolution to address concerns such as expiring health care programs, a funding shortfall in veterans’ health costs, and possibly new money for the Secret Service after the apparent second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
“For weeks, Speaker Johnson pursued a partisan ploy knowing full well it had no chance of passing or averting a shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said after the House vote. “We now have only a few days left for House Republicans to come to their senses, come to the table, and come together with Democrats to craft a bipartisan agreement.”
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro reiterated her call for the “four corners” — the Appropriations chairs and ranking members in both chambers — to sit down and hammer out a bipartisan bill earlier Wednesday.
“If you leave this in the hands of the appropriators, this will get done.” she said. “We’ll meet a December deadline… we’ve done that in the past, and that’s where we should go from here.”
‘In the middle of the game’
Johnson offered no hint of what a Plan B could look like as he spent days trying to shore up support for his bill that included a priority pushed by Trump: requiring that those registering to vote show proof of citizenship.
“We’ll see what happens with the bill,” he said earlier Wednesday, before the vote. “We’re on the field in the middle of the game and the quarterback’s calling the play. We’re going to run the play.”
And just hours before the vote, Trump doubled down on the plan — nicknamed the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or SAVE for short — urging Republicans to rally behind it.
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social. “Be smart, Republicans. You’ve been pushed around long enough by the Democrats. Don’t let it happen again.”
But some hardline conservatives in his conference had ridiculed the plan as “theater” that stood no chance of becoming law.
“Johnson is leading a fake fight that he has no intention of actually fighting,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X, formerly Twitter, this week.
Democrats say the election security measure Johnson sought would disenfranchise legally eligible voters because of new paperwork requirements and depress turnout, while it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote. Republicans argued that proof of citizenship is vital to ensure election integrity.
Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., perhaps Johnson’s two chief antagonists on his side of the aisle, each voted “present” on the bill Wednesday night.
“I’m disappointed,” Johnson told reporters after the vote. “I know this was the right thing to do, and I think the American people are going to let a lot of the folks that voted ‘no’ tonight hear their concerns about it.”
New Pentagon pressure
While Johnson was hoping to muscle the bill through the House in a party-line vote, some Republicans, including appropriators, long resisted Johnson’s push for a six-month funding extension. Citing warnings from the Pentagon, they said it was dangerous to force the military to live without a spending increase for the next six months.
Military service chiefs reiterated their concerns with a six-month bill in letters to DeLauro, D-Conn., and other top appropriators this week. Even a three-month extension would have negative impacts, according to an Army handout delivered to lawmakers showing that $7.3 billion worth of new procurement and research programs, production rate increases and military construction projects would be put on hold.
Far more likely to win approval is a continuing resolution that extends spending into mid-December, giving appropriators three months to wrap up final spending bills for the year before a new president takes office in January. Dec. 13 is the date that has been talked about the most.
“I would say all roads are that Plan B is probably shorter term, clean,” Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., an Appropriations Committee member, said Wednesday. “My mission is to not shut the government down.”
The Senate, meanwhile, continued to hold back on a CR of its own that might win bipartisan support.
Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, a senior GOP appropriator, said he suspected the Senate would not start to move its own version until early next week.
“I think everybody would like to give the House plenty of time to do what they can do, but this is something that needs to be done,” he said.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., earlier had said it was possible the Senate could go first. But he said there was no point discussing a possible Plan B while Plan A was still alive because then the latter loses steam.
That’s no longer an issue after Wednesday night’s vote.
It was still too early for next steps to crystallize, lawmakers said after the vote, but it was rapidly becoming clear that a shorter-term CR, minus the voting restriction bill, is the most likely default option.
“If the Democrats are willing to vote for a clean CR, then I would think that we could do it through suspension,” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said. He was referring to the procedure that skips a rule for floor debate but requires two-thirds of members present and voting to support it.
Rep. John B. Larson, D-Conn., said he believes Democrats would vote for a clean stopgap measure that extends into mid-December.
Aidan Quigley and Paul M. Krawzak contributed to this report.
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