Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to tie a six-month spending extension to a voting restriction bill pushed by former President Donald Trump was stymied Wednesday as the Louisiana Republican was forced to pull the package from the floor schedule.
Johnson announced his decision midday in the face of certain defeat instead of pushing forward with the planned vote around 4:30 p.m. He said GOP leaders would continue to work on the package to try to shore up votes over the weekend, in hopes of bringing it back to the floor as soon as next week.
“The whip is going to do the hard work and build consensus. We’re going to work through the weekend on that,” Johnson told reporters shortly before the House convened at noon. “No vote today because we’re in the consensus-building business here in Congress. With small majorities, that’s what you do. …We’re having thoughtful conversations, family conversations, within the Republican conference, and I believe we’ll get there.”
Despite vowing to push forward with the current text, the speaker and his allies will likely need to pivot to a new strategy to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of the month — or wait and see if the Senate will take action to move its funding extension to mid-December.
Both anti-spending conservatives and defense hawks who don’t want to pause new programs and wait six months to increase the Pentagon’s budget said they would vote against the bill. House Armed Services Chairman Mike D. Rogers, R-Ala., said the bill would be “terrible” for the Defense Department.
The inclusion of legislation that would require those registering to vote to show proof of citizenship alienated Democrats. Only one — Maine’s Jared Golden — publicly backed the temporary spending measure.
Trump has called on Johnson to “close it down” if he can’t get the voting legislation attached to the stopgap bill. But the reaction to Johnson’s plan this week made it clear that strategy cannot secure the votes needed to pass the House.
Still, Johnson on Wednesday vowed to press on with getting the voting restriction bill — dubbed the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or “SAVE Act” for short — through somehow.
“I want any member of Congress, in either party, to explain to the American people why we should not ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections,” Johnson said. “We’re going to work on that issue around the clock because we have an obligation to the people to do it, and that’s what the fight is.”
Democrats say requiring proof of citizenship could disenfranchise eligible voters and depress turnout, while it’s already illegal for noncitizens to participate in federal elections.
Prepping to pivot
With that element likely to be dropped at some point, the next fight will be over the duration of a more “clean” extension. Johnson and some House Republicans believe that they will get a better fiscal 2025 spending deal next year with Trump back in the White House and more Republicans in Congress.
But Democrats in both chambers and Senate Appropriations ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, all prefer a shorter stopgap, to mid-December. Senate appropriators are working on a short-term stopgap that would run through Dec. 13, though the drafting of that bill is not expected to be complete until next week.
Collins said Wednesday that Senate appropriators are working through the list of “anomalies” that the White House asked to be included in this stopgap bill. She said she thinks lawmakers should finish up the fiscal 2025 bills as fast as possible.
“If it goes beyond mid-December, it places the new administration at a huge disadvantage because they’re going to have to deal with issues that date back to October of this year, rather than focusing on the [fiscal 2026] budget, which I think would be their preference,” she said.
House Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro, another proponent of the December timeline, said it is “past time” for she, Collins, House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., to start bipartisan stopgap talks.
“For the good of the American people, Congress must move on from House Republicans’ partisan continuing resolution proposals and begin negotiating a funding bill that can earn the support of both Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate,” DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement Wednesday.
‘Brutal honesty’
Cole huddled with his subcommittee chairmen, known as cardinals, on Wednesday afternoon. He said he is ready to start negotiations but is waiting to touch base with Johnson.
“We’re obviously prepared to negotiate at any point, but it depends on what the speaker wants to do,” he said. “I’m not starting any talks until my speaker tells me.”
Senior House appropriators batted around ideas of what the next steps might be during their meeting, Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman Mark Amodei said. But he said they were waiting for Johnson to signal his next move.
“To be honest, there was discussion in there that if you do have a Plan B, the last thing you want to do is say what it is, because you just undermined Plan A,” Amodei, R-Nev., said. “How’s that for some brutal honesty?”
A number of the cardinals on Wednesday encouraged Cole to push Johnson to put a clean, short-term continuing resolution on the floor now — a final outcome they feel is inevitable, one source familiar with the meeting said.
A handful of senior House Republican appropriators, including Cole, have indicated they prefer a shorter stopgap bill than the one Johnson has put forward.
“I was never a fan of that,” Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Steve Womack, R-Ark., said. “I’m a fan of this Congress taking care of this Congress’ business, and not kicking its business into the next Congress.”
Womack said he is worried the Senate will jam the House if his chamber does not make the first move.
“My biggest fear overall is we are going to mess around with this thing for the next couple of weeks, and then we are going to be subject to an action of the Senate,” he said. “They are going to leave town and go home to campaign, and they are going to say, ‘Here you go House, take it or leave it.’ And then we’re going to be holding the bag.”
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