Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are rushing through a three-month spending bill Wednesday in a whirlwind development that will send Congress home through the election.
The agreement gives Schumer what he has long craved – the opportunity to pass a spending bill in the lame duck session after the election but before the new Congress is seated in January, locking in spending levels and policy priorities before an expected Republican takeover in the upper chamber relegates him to minority leader.
The bill’s passage is a fait accompli. Johnson has teed up a Wednesday evening vote under suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds support but means he can bypass procedures by which his fellow Republicans who oppose the bill can stop it. The bill will receive overwhelming Democrat support.
Tuesday evening, a jubilant Schumer announced he reached an agreement to speed the bill through the Senate that very night.
“I just locked in an agreement to pass the government funding bill tomorrow without amendments, avoiding an unnecessary government shutdown,” Schumer announced. “Families can rest assured that their lives won’t be needlessly upended due to an unnecessary shutdown.”
Johnson fought a three-month CR publicly – for a time. During the August recess, Johnson announced he would attach the SAVE Act – legislation authored by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and supported by Donald Trump to limit voting by non-citizens – to a six-month continuing resolution (CR). If successful, the bill would have continued current spending levels – however loathsome to conservatives – into March, when hypothetical House and Senate majorities and a Trump administration would be in the driver’s seat.
But Johnson’s August announcement caught members off guard. And many members of in disparate philosophical corners of his own party did not appreciate being told by Johnson to fall in line for a bill many believed Johnson to be unserious about passing.
Many conservatives oppose CRs on principal, viewing them as a fundamental failure by Congress to perform its most basic duty on time. Members of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, always gleeful to pass spending bills crafted by its own members, balked. Defense hawks opposed a clean CR without increases in defense spending and aid to foreign wars. And yet others wanted to attach legislation that might be more successfully used to woo (or be used in campaign ads) Democrats – the House passed the SAVE Act earlier this year as a standalone bill, although the Senate has not taken it up.
There’s evidence supporting member skepticism. Earlier in September, Johnson told Senate Republicans to strip the SAVE Act from the government funding legislation once the House passed his bill, senior aides from two different Republican Senate offices who supported the SAVE Act being part of government funding efforts told Breitbart News. Johnson’s office denied the allegations, but the story gelled with the beliefs of many of Johnson’s own members.
Put simply, many members view Johnson’s speakership as a temporary arrangement, and they were unwilling to vote for something they opposed and viewed as a mere messaging bill at the command of someone with no power or desire to punish them.
Late lobbying by Johnson reduced Republican defections to 19, but that was more than enough to kill the bill.
Even powerful House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), long a leadership stalwart, voted against Johnson’s bill – a clear signal that Republicans with the most to lose from a Speaker’s wrath can oppose him with impunity.
After the bill’s defeat, Johnson immediately switched gears, supporting a three-month CR and extolling its many virtues to a skeptical but weary Republican Conference. He argued Republicans would suffer the blame for a shutdown and therefore must pass the CR – a stock argument employed by prior Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.
The Speaker also argued that the three-month CR will not lead to an inevitable omnibus – the bundling of all twelve appropriations bills, although that distinction may be more stylistic than substantive. Johnson would not rule out multiple minibuses, and if past is prologue, Johnson could employ a single vote on the rule to unlock multiple minibus floor votes.
As with multiple significant pieces of legislation Johnson has passed in his year with the gavel, Democrat support of the bill is expected to exceed Republican support, despite Republicans holding the majority.
Lame duck spending bills are increasingly a congressional tradition, for good reason – at least, as leadership sees it.
“The Speaker is using the CR to set up a government funding crisis the week before Christmas,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) posted on X. “Why Christmas? So he can pressure Members to vote for a bill they haven’t read, by using their desire to see their families on Christmas Eve against them.”
To secure Wednesday night’s votes, Johnson and Schumer appear to be using similar thinking.
With a hurricane heading for Florida, leadership in each chamber is warning that a hurricane approaching Florida could ground flights and strand lawmakers in Washington if they don’t dutifully pass the CR and get out of town.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye
