{"id":16294,"date":"2025-12-04T23:02:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T23:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-scrambles-to-pass-pentagon-bill-as-gop-ranks-seethe\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T23:02:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T23:02:13","slug":"mike-johnson-scrambles-to-pass-pentagon-bill-as-gop-ranks-seethe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/mike-johnson-scrambles-to-pass-pentagon-bill-as-gop-ranks-seethe\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Johnson scrambles to pass Pentagon bill as GOP ranks seethe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

House Republicans spent this week venting about Mike Johnson<\/a>, questioning the speaker\u2019s hold on his tenuous House majority. Next week, he has to prove he\u2019s capable of governing.<\/p>\n

The annual Pentagon policy bill<\/a> is due on the floor just in time to test Johnson\u2019s ability to command and cajole his conference with must-pass legislation at stake. Already GOP leaders have had to delay release of bill text<\/a> 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\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Johnson is already bruised from a high-profile fight<\/a> with Rep. Elise Stefanik<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s effort to hammer out a still-brewing Republican health care plan he\u2019s promised to unveil by early next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d said Rep. Greg Steube<\/a> (R-Fla.) when asked about Johnson\u2019s leadership. \u201cHis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steube, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was \u201cnot happy\u201d that Johnson initially excluded Stefanik\u2019s legislation allowing for congressional notification of counterintelligence probes concerning candidates for federal office \u2014 part of an annual intelligence authorization legislation that, he said, included \u201ca lot of conservative reforms.\u201d The speaker argued he didn\u2019t know about the measure and that Stefanik\u2019s accusations were \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 meaning it needs to have Democratic buy-in.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting an agreement right now between Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate’s not easy,\u201d Majority Leader Steve Scalise<\/a> said. \u201cBut we’re getting close, and we want to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson played down the internal turmoil Thursday, saying Republicans \u201care exactly on the trajectory of where we’ve always planned to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSteady at the wheel, everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the pending fights over the Pentagon bill \u2014 or the National Defense Authorization Act, as it is formally known \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

For instance, he is risking a showdown with conservative hard-liners if the final package doesn\u2019t include a provision they favor that would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a digital currency. Johnson promised House Freedom Caucus members<\/a> he would include the provision in the defense bill amid a toxic intra-GOP row during the House\u2019s shambolic \u201ccrypto week\u201d this summer.<\/p>\n

If the so-called central bank digital currency ban is missing, \u201cit is a big deal,\u201d said one House conservative who, like others quoted for this story, was granted anonymity to speak frankly about conference dynamics.<\/p>\n

The fate of that provision is currently tied up in talks over another matter \u2014 one that highlights how Johnson is facing pressure from another influential corner of the House GOP: his committee chairs.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> (R-Ark.) opposes the move and wants to advance a slate of House housing bills through his committee later this month.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s behest, over how to add some housing affordability measures to the defense bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrench is very logical and measured, but he’s very stern in what he believes and what he wants,\u201d said a senior House Republican.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Tricare health system. He\u2019s also caught between big business and China hawks \u2014 two major GOP blocs \u2014 on whether to add in new restrictions on U.S. investments in China. Rep. John Moolenaar<\/a> (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 \u201cfinancial community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NDAA is \u201ca train that comes around once a year,\u201d he added. \u201cWe’re hoping to include it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Republicans spent this week venting about Mike Johnson, questioning the speaker\u2019s hold on his tenuous House majority. Next week, he has to prove he\u2019s capable of governing. The annual Pentagon policy bill is due on the floor just in time to test Johnson\u2019s ability to command and cajole his conference with must-pass legislation at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}