Congress
Mike Johnson scrambles to pass Pentagon bill as GOP ranks seethe
House Republicans spent this week venting about Mike Johnson, questioning the speaker’s hold on his tenuous House majority. Next week, he has to prove he’s capable of governing.
The annual Pentagon policy bill is due on the floor just in time to test Johnson’s ability to command and cajole his conference with must-pass legislation at stake. Already GOP leaders have had to delay release of bill text as they deal with a host of 11th-hour intraparty flare-ups that show just how hard it will be for the speaker to lead ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Johnson is already bruised from a high-profile fight with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of the GOP leadership team, over a surveillance provision she wanted attached to the sprawling defense package. She got her way after publicly accusing the speaker of lying and sandbagging conservatives.
Other deeply divisive issues remain, ranging from cryptocurrency policy to in vitro fertilization, that could threaten to further splinter the House GOP and imperil the typically bipartisan Pentagon bill. The brouhaha threatens to complicate Johnson’s effort to hammer out a still-brewing Republican health care plan he’s promised to unveil by early next week.
“I think there’s a lot of members that are frustrated that we’re not doing the things that we said that we were going to do,” said Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) when asked about Johnson’s leadership. “His response to that would be, we only have a [three] vote majority, but I think if you govern conservatively, Republicans will show up and vote for it.”
Steube, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was “not happy” that Johnson initially excluded Stefanik’s legislation allowing for congressional notification of counterintelligence probes concerning candidates for federal office — part of an annual intelligence authorization legislation that, he said, included “a lot of conservative reforms.” The speaker argued he didn’t know about the measure and that Stefanik’s accusations were “false.”
Top GOP leaders are scrambling to douse the remaining fires and release text of the massive bill as early as Saturday, but it could slip into Sunday, according to four people granted anonymity to comment on internal planning. The negotiations are complicated, they say, because the final product must not only pass the GOP-controlled House but also withstand a possible Senate filibuster — meaning it needs to have Democratic buy-in.
“Getting an agreement right now between Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate’s not easy,” Majority Leader Steve Scalise said. “But we’re getting close, and we want to get it done.”
Johnson played down the internal turmoil Thursday, saying Republicans “are exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be.”
“Steady at the wheel, everybody,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”
But the pending fights over the Pentagon bill — or the National Defense Authorization Act, as it is formally known — serve as a mini-preview for the turmoil Johnson is likely to face for the remainder of the 119th Congress as he tries to tackle health care, government funding and other flashpoints.
For instance, he is risking a showdown with conservative hard-liners if the final package doesn’t include a provision they favor that would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital currency. Johnson promised House Freedom Caucus members he would include the provision in the defense bill amid a toxic intra-GOP row during the House’s shambolic “crypto week” this summer.
If the so-called central bank digital currency ban is missing, “it is a big deal,” said one House conservative who, like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about conference dynamics.
The fate of that provision is currently tied up in talks over another matter — one that highlights how Johnson is facing pressure from another influential corner of the House GOP: his committee chairs.
GOP leaders are taking steps to add a scaled-down version of a Senate housing proposal to the package. But Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) opposes the move and wants to advance a slate of House housing bills through his committee later this month.
Johnson and Hill, normally low-key operators, had an intense conversation on the House floor Wednesday night as House and Senate GOP leaders went back-and-forth, including at the White House’s behest, over how to add some housing affordability measures to the defense bill.
“French is very logical and measured, but he’s very stern in what he believes and what he wants,” said a senior House Republican.
Johnson, a staunch social conservative, is also facing pressure from women and others in the House to add a measure expanding coverage for in vitro fertilization and other fertility services for military families under DOD’s Tricare health system. He’s also caught between big business and China hawks — two major GOP blocs — on whether to add in new restrictions on U.S. investments in China. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), who chairs a select committee on China, said he was hopeful the provision would make it in but pointed to opposition from the “financial community.”
The NDAA is “a train that comes around once a year,” he added. “We’re hoping to include it.”
Congress
Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.
Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.
House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.
GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”
The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.
Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.
Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.
“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”
Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”
He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.
Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”
“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”
Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”
“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”
Congress
Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday
The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.
House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.
That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.
But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.
Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.
He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.
Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.
Congress
Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown
Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.
House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.
The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.
This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.
Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.
Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.
That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.
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