House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, listens as Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets Andrey Koslov, an Israeli who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 and rescued by by Israeli special forces on June 8, 2024, at the Israeli American Council National Summit, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington. Right is Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, and left is attorney Alan Dershowitz.
Associated Press Photo by Evan Vucci
WASHINGTON — After 21 House Republicans either rejected or ducked a vote that would have required proof of citizenship for voters to register as part of an effort to continue funding the federal government, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House leadership started shifting toward a measure that would include Democratic backing to avoid a near-total shutdown on Oct. 1.
Staffers on the House Appropriations Committee, according to one who confirmed what members and other staffers had said Thursday, are preparing a legislative instrument without the proof of citizenship language former President Donald Trump wanted attached to the “continuing resolution,” or CR, that would punt immediate funding decisions but allow the government to continue working after its spending authority expires the night of Sept. 30.
It will be what’s called a “clean CR,” meaning a straight extension of spending until Dec. 13, or perhaps Dec. 20, that Democrats can approve. The new CR would set up another thousand-page take-or-leave-it “omnibus” spending bill in the days before Christmas. Republicans have long sought to approve spending for the fiscal year through 12 separate appropriations bills instead of with an all-in-one omnibus bill. But only a handful of those individual bills got passed, and time is running out.
For Louisiana, the new CR would include recharging the fast-depleting account that pays for disaster relief and include an extension to the federal flood insurance program, which expires Sept. 30, according to the sources.
The legislation’s text is likely to be released Sunday and scheduled for a vote sometime this week. The House meets Monday through Friday, then leaves Washington for October to campaign for the Nov. 5 congressional and presidential elections. They return Nov. 12.
Though staffers are hard at work, the language of the new resolution could be influenced by Johnson’s conversations Thursday night with Trump.
Just how much won’t be known until the resolution is released Sunday.
Johnson said Friday, “I’m not going to discuss what I talked with him about, but I spent a lot of time with him last night. It was great.”
In a tight race with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump, the GOP presidential candidate, has made the perceived woes of immigration on everyday Americans a cornerstone of his campaign. He wanted the House to include proof of citizenship and other language from the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act,” or SAVE Act.
Trump repeatedly voices claims that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of noncitizens are illegally voting, though no credible evidence of such has emerged.
When the House’s far-right tried to oust Johnson earlier this year, the speaker sought Trump’s backing. Trump demanded the SAVE Act language during an April 12 meeting with Johnson at Mar-a-Lago.
About two hours before last Wednesday’s House, vote Trump posted on the Truth Social platform: “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.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told reporters before the House voted that a government shutdown would set in the minds of voters that Congress was unable to govern.
“One thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” he said. “It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election, because certainly we’d get the blame.”
Wednesday’s 202-220 vote defeated the continuing resolution with attached SAVE language.
One Johnson House supporter posited confidentially that Wednesday’s outcome, which was expected, was to show that the Trump-inspired CR would fail and lead to a government shutdown a month before the nation votes.
National media last week speculated on how this imbroglio would affect Johnson’s future atop the House chamber.
Punchbowl — a digital outlet that specializes in insider Capitol news — on Friday wrote that if Republicans retain control of the House majority after the November election, Johnson would be reelected as speaker. If Republicans lose the House, Johnson likely would be supplanted by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, as minority leader, Punchbowl predicted.
But NOTUS, an online news site affiliated with the Allbritton Journalism Institute, quoted Republican House members, both right-wingers and centrists, who were unhappy with Johnson’s handling of the continuing resolution.
NOTUS reported that Rep. Ralph Norman, R-South Carolina, said Republican lawmakers are “jockeying into positions.”
And the publication The New Republic, a left-leaning magazine, quoted Rep. Clay Higgins, the Lafayette Republican for whom Johnson campaigned, saying: “This town is trying to eat that man alive.”
