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Johnson’s new plan: Is the third time a charm?

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Speaker Mike Johnson will try yet again to pass a short-term funding bill this afternoon, just hours before a government shutdown is set to begin. But this time it seems likely to work.

Johnson is now pushing a short-term funding bill that keeps federal agencies open until mid-March. The bill will include $100 billion in disaster aid for the hurricane-battered Southeast and other states. There’s also $30 billion in aid for farmers and a one-year extension of current agriculture policy.

The measure will be taken up under suspension, according to senior GOP lawmakers and aides, meaning it needs a two-thirds majority to pass. There will be one vote, instead of individual votes on the component parts as Johnson first envisioned.

If House Democrats back it – which seems likely – and the Senate processes it quickly, the measure could be approved by tonight’s midnight shutdown deadline and sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.

Even if lawmakers miss that deadline, OMB has previously ruled there’s no real shutdown if Congress is in the midst of passing legislation to keep federal agencies open.

But the measure won’t include an extension of the debt limit, a major setback for Johnson and President-elect Donald Trump. The pair had been pushing the House to pass a two-year suspension of the federal borrowing cap, a move that would help the president-elect pass a tax cut next year. Johnson faced a revolt by conservative hardliners – led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and the House Freedom Caucus – which refused to sign off on the plan.

Yet conservatives – having won their showdown with Trump – now face the prospect that Congress will approve $130 billion in emergency funding without offsets.

“Many people expressed their thoughts and bringing in the members is what we needed,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) told us. “Originally, this was largely negotiated by staff and that’s not what we need up here. [Johnson] bringing in members is the right path.”

Democrats are, above all else, infuriated that Republicans blew up their painstakingly negotiated, 1,547-page agreement with Johnson. There was a lot that Democrats liked in the initial CR package that will no longer become law.

But putting aside their anger, there’s a sense that the new GOP proposal is palatable. There’s nothing on the debt limit, which means the party maintains a huge area of leverage for the next Congress. Democrats as a whole hate shutdowns. And many want to go home for the holidays, especially the politically vulnerable Frontliners.

House Democrats we heard from this afternoon emphasized they’re waiting to see what House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries decrees before making up their minds. Jeffries is their North Star and they’ve agreed to follow his lead in this fight. The New York Democrat huddled with the Frontliners Friday afternoon and said he wanted to end this fight today, according to sources in the room.

Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, was also meeting with Jeffries Friday afternoon.

On the speaker. Johnson comes out of this week with his standing seriously diminished, no matter what the final vote count is.

After the election, Johnson decided that he would only extend government funding until March, an effort to avoid a year-end omnibus spending bill while allowing Trump to put his stamp on federal spending in the new year.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and the bulk of leading Senate Republicans that we spoke to disagreed with Johnson. They told us that Trump should not have a federal spending fight during the opening months of his new term.

But Johnson forged ahead, working with Democrats to craft a monstrosity of a spending bill that included a host of policies completely unrelated to the general operations of government.

Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire who Johnson brought to Capitol Hill to talk about the Department of Government Efficiency, spent hours on X trashing the bill. Eventually, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance came out in opposition to the package, urging Johnson to lift the debt limit as well.

Johnson then tried to do just that – but that bill failed miserably as well.

At 12:30 p.m. Friday, Johnson gathered the House Republican Conference in the basement of the Capitol. It was a bit of a bumpy affair.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) upbraided Johnson for negotiating with just a small group of members. Johnson said he’s been dealing with an ever-changing environment – in other words, the utterances of Musk and Trump.

Johnson also promised that when Republicans lift the debt limit by $1.5 trillion as part of a budget reconciliation bill, they would cut $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending. Johnson said he discussed with Vance the best way to memorialize this promise. Vance asked if Johnson could get 220 Republicans to sign a letter that said they would not cut Social Security. Johnson said he did not think that was the best approach.

Finally, after more fits and starts, Republican leadership polled the conference and decided to hold one vote on the simple CR until March, with an extension of the farm bill, money for the agriculture industry and disaster relief. Republicans agreed with this strategy.

But in this episode, lawmakers began losing trust in Johnson. They say his decision-making processes are insular, his strategy is uneven and he has lost his sense of the conference’s politics.

To be fair, we’re in the middle of a legislative crisis and tensions are running high. But the speaker vote is two weeks from today. Johnson has a lot of work to do between now and then.

– John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman, Mica Soellner, Ben Brody and Max Cohen