WASHINGTON – House lawmakers were poised to approve new Speaker Mike Johnson’s bill Tuesday afternoon to avert a government shutdown, delaying the GOP’s fight over spending until after the holidays.
The so-called tiered continuing resolution, or CR, would fund part of the government — including the departments of Agriculture, Transportation and Veterans Affairs — through Jan. 19, and would fund the Department of Defense and other remaining parts of the government through Feb. 2.
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The Czech Republic is «clean,» with no spending cuts or controversial policy provisions that alienate Democrats. It also does not include a complementary package covering things like aid for Israel and Ukraine, humanitarian assistance or border security, leaving those issues for later this year.
Keeping the government’s lights on until the New Year would give House Republicans more time to pass the 12 appropriations bills and House and Senate negotiators to reach a broader deal. The CR will also give hectic lawmakers, who have been in session for 10 consecutive weeks, a chance to take a break from each other.
«I’ve been drinking from Niagara Falls for the last three weeks. This will allow everyone to go home for a couple of days for Thanksgiving and let everyone calm down,» Johnson, R-La., told journalists.
«The members have been here… for 10 weeks. This place is a pressure cooker,» he said. «And then I think everyone can go home, we can come back, reset… We’re going to make that plan to fight for those principles.»
House leaders have structured the CR vote so that it will need the support of two-thirds of the entire House to pass. With conservatives rebelling against Johnson’s funding bill, he will need significant support from Democrats.
If the CR is approved by the House, it will go to the Senate, which must send it to President Joe Biden’s desk by Friday night to avoid a shutdown.
Publicly, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., says Democrats are still evaluating Johnson’s proposal. But in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, Jeffries told the Czech Republic’s rank-and-file Democrats: «This is fine. We can live with this,» according to a member of his leadership team present.
A handful of Democrats who left the caucus said they would agree.
«We’ve made it clear that there should be no spending cuts. And we’ve made it clear that there should be no poisonous partisan political provisions,» Jeffries told reporters after the meeting.
In the room, two of the main appropriators: Representatives Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat of Florida. She argued that Democrats can’t be a “cheap date” and help Johnson pass CR without getting something in return, according to a source present. DeLauro and Wasserman Schultz said they wanted a path forward on headline spending numbers and agreements on funding limits for all 12 spending bills, while others pushed for assurances that the House will vote on aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Johnson’s clean CR will depend on Democratic votes, as will the latest funding bill that cost former President Kevin McCarthy his job in early October. The House conservatives who helped oust McCarthy from power despise CRs in general, and on Tuesday morning, the far-right House Freedom Caucus said its members had taken a position opposing tiered CR, despite which was originally proposed by members of the Freedom Caucus.
«It contains no spending reductions, no border security, and no single meaningful victory for the American people,» the Freedom Caucus said in its statement.
In defending his strategy, Johnson argued that this CR would help Republicans address spending and debt in the future.
«We are not giving up, we are fighting. But we have to be careful when choosing fights,» the spokesman said. «You have to fight fights you can win.»
«This was a very important first step in moving to the next stage, so that we can change the way Washington works,» he said.
But with Johnson in office for less than three weeks, there has been no discussion among Republicans about an effort to unseat him by the CR.
«I don’t like the bill. I like President Johnson,» said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., one of eight Republicans who voted to unseat McCarthy. «President Johnson has been in office for what, two or three weeks now? … The reason President Johnson is in the position he is in is because of nine months of failure under the administration of President McCarthy.”
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., another member of the group McCarthy has dubbed the «Hate Eight,» also blamed the former president.
«Chairman McCarthy had been doing it since January and then he started working on it two weeks before the deadline and after we took six weeks off, and damn, we should have been here working,» Burchett said.
«I think people will be unhappy and uncomfortable with this,» Burchett said of Johnson’s CR, but added that he believes Johnson will survive until the 2024 election.
«I think he’ll be a great speaker,» he said.