In his bid to claim the House speaker’s gavel and end three weeks of chaos last fall, Rep. Mike Johnson mapped out an ambitious agenda.
Week by week, month by month, the Louisiana Republican promised to meet the “urgency of this hour” with “bold, decisive action.” Above all else, Johnson promised, the House GOP would finish funding federal agencies before the traditional end-of-summer five-week recess.
“DO NOT break for district work period unless all 12 appropriations bills have passed the House,” he wrote on Oct. 23, in a letter sent to all House Republicans with to-do lists and all-caps directives.
Well, that didn’t pan out.
Before lunchtime Thursday, Speaker Johnson bowed to reality and sent lawmakers home a week earlier than originally planned, turning what is traditionally called “August recess” into a 6½-week break from legislative action.
Republicans have passed five of the 12 bills that fund the federal government, putting them well ahead of last year’s absolutely dysfunctional timeline, when just one bill had been passed at this point. But the House GOP failed to pass two others and decided the rest were too politically tricky to even attempt at this point.
Even those bills that did pass contain so many extremely conservative policy riders and spending cuts to important programs that they are dead in the Senate, where a traditional bipartisan process is playing out as expected. All that House Republicans have to show for their work on government funding is creating more political exposure for a couple dozen incumbents that might further endanger their majority.
While most Americans have focused their attention on the made-for-Hollywood presidential campaign that has captured the nation’s attention, House Republicans have continued sputtering along in the shadows the past three months in their traditionally chaotic fashion.
A few weeks ago, as President Biden struggled, that might have been a fine enough strategy. But his decision to stand down has lit a fire under liberal activists rallying for Vice President Harris, and up to 10 of the most vulnerable House Republicans reside in California or in the New York media market. In those places, former president Donald Trump remains a political anchor while Harris might energize her base out of their Biden-induced slumber — possibly setting the stage for a net gain of at least four seats that would vault Democrats into the House majority next year.
It didn’t have to be this way for House Republicans. Back in the early spring, Johnson allowed passage of a national security bill that included $60 billion for Ukraine. That came right after the passage of two massive packages that included all 12 spending bills at the funding level agreed to last year by Biden and Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
As a result, some of Trump’s loudest House allies tried to force him out in similar fashion to McCarthy. But Trump gave the speaker the support he needed to fend off the challenge (also bolstered by some Democratic votes). Johnson’s path to remaining in power became clear: retain the majority and hope Trump wins the presidency and endorses him for another term.
Trump has never shown much interest in the specificity of agency budgets, other than those dealing with border security. Some of the most conservative members encouraged the speaker to not even bother trying to approve the 12 spending bills until after the election, hoping for a Republican sweep that would lead to a very conservative budget.
But House GOP leaders have tried to split the difference by sticking to the rigid outline of the Biden-McCarthy deal. They’re ignoring side deals that led to billions more in domestic funding while also allowing some very conservative policy riders to creep into funding legislation.
Democrats accused the speaker of genuflecting, again, to his most conservative wing by engaging in a spending process that would fail. “They knew these bills could never pass. They went through this charade to appease Republican extremists, and now, Speaker Johnson is sending members home despite promising he would not take August recess unless all 12 bills passed,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
Republicans defend their dismal showing by blaming Democrats for never providing more than a handful of votes for the bills, leaving them little margin for error. “You eventually hit a wall because, you know, we have a few of our own members that vote against some of these bills,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), who made the call to send lawmakers home early, told The Hill.
By pushing ahead with these GOP-only bills, Republican leaders have repeatedly forced their most politically vulnerable members to cast votes in the committee and on the House floor that aren’t exactly appealing to centrist voters.
Because of their own conservative political demands, House Republicans protected funding for the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, as well as Social Security and Medicare. That forced deep cuts to some domestic programs in order to slash overall spending consistent with their political and policy aims.
The result: Democrats estimate that 72,000 teacher positions for low-income students would be eliminated in the bill funding the Education Department, while the Environmental Protection Agency could face a 20 percent cut. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service budget would come more than $300 million below the president’s request.
These domestic programs don’t grab national headlines, but they are often beloved in certain regions and can be quite easily turned into political weapons.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), a freshman whose district narrowly backed Biden over Trump four years ago, received an early lesson last year when he voted in committee for the bill funding the Agriculture Department. It included restrictions against mail delivery of pills related to abortions, a vote that Democrats turned into a quick video ad against him.
Democrats homed in on Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), a senior member of the committee who is facing a difficult reelection in his suburban district, for voting to strip LGBTQ+ community funding projects out of another bill.
The more establishment-friendly corner of the House Republican conference often begrudgingly goes along with leadership even if it means supporting bills pushed by far-right Republicans from safe conservative districts.
After final votes Thursday, Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), from a Long Island district that leans Republican, told reporters he would center his campaign on bills passed last year that tried to deal with key issues for swing-district voters.
“I’m going to focus my campaign on policy and ensuring that voters know where I stand on the issues that matter the most — about the border, about the economy, public safety, pocketbook issues, inflation,” said LaLota, who faces a well-funded opponent, former CNN news personality John Avlon.
He said he was ready to defend cuts to some domestic programs as a down payment toward reducing the nearly $35 trillion national debt.
“There are things that responsible people from Washington need to do, and that should not be a partisan issue. Members of both parties should be able to join in reasonable, responsible spending cuts,” LaLota said.
Some GOP moderates have rebelled against the spending bills — along with some arch conservatives who make it a habit of voting against almost every funding plan — and that has stalled the appropriations process until the fall, or more likely, until after the November elections.
In trying to placate his hard-line members, Johnson and other GOP leaders are fighting the last war. They continue act as if their biggest fear is a right-wing coup, as befell McCarthy, when their most immediate concern should simply be protecting their majority.
About 20 House Republicans antagonized McCarthy last year, beginning with forcing him to go 15 rounds in early January 2023 before electing him speaker. In October, eight of them joined with Democrats to oust him as speaker.
After three weeks of paralysis over electing a speaker, Johnson’s best résumé highlight might have been that no one hated him, meaning he could win the floor vote for speaker.
But in the past few months, the atmosphere shifted away from the 20 or so most strident conservatives and instead toward whatever best serves the interests of Trump — who seems to clearly get that last year’s chaos should not be repeated anytime soon.
Trump demonstrated that by helping defeat the effort by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), considered one of Trump’s closest allies, to oust Johnson. And not a single Republican has paid any political price in their primary election for supporting Ukraine aid, with Trump silent in most of those races.
The Trump-Johnson connection was on display at the GOP convention in Milwaukee, where the speaker regularly got spotted in the VIP front rows with Trump and other high-profile Republicans. And some of the fringier conservatives were somewhat sidelined, including Greene, who was often seated a row or two behind Trump and got relegated to a non-primetime speaking role. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) never spoke onstage.
If Trump wins and Republicans retain the House majority, Johnson stands a good chance of winning his endorsement to remain speaker — which would all but silence Johnson’s critics.
If Republicans lose the majority, whether or not Trump wins, Johnson will have a hard time remaining GOP leader.
And Democrats want to make Republicans pay for every vote they’ve cast the past 18 months.
“I think what we should use against them is the fact that they are incompetent,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. “I have served here for a long, long time, and I’ve never seen such incompetence.”
