As Speaker Mike Johnson prepares to put a three-month spending bill on the House floor next week, setting up a new funding deadline and a potential shutdown in Donald Trump’s first 100 days, many House Republicans are asking a simple question: why?
“Why not do it ‘til the end of the year?” asked Rep. Troy Nehls, referring to the end of September when the fiscal year ends.
He asked how Republicans could get a better spending deal done with a one-vote margin — Republicans are set to start the Trump administration with a 217-215 majority — and he suggested lawmakers should just pass a bill covering the next nine months.
“I don’t like that fact,” Nehls said, “but it gives Donald Trump an opportunity to then focus on the border, focus on all these issues, and then get appropriation bills for the following year.”
Nehls, a staunch Trump supporter, is not usually one of the members calling for a larger spending deal, but he believes it’s the best way to help Trump and avoid a shutdown just weeks into the new president’s tenure.
Rep. Tim Burchett, an avowed hater of continuing resolutions, expressed a similar thought.
“I don’t want to tie Trump’s hands in the first 100 days, so that’ll weigh greatly on my thought process,” he told NOTUS.
And Rep. Steve Womack, a senior appropriator who chairs the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development subcommittee, said he hated punting government funding until March because the work should have already been completed.
He emphasized that appropriators know what to do and how to get it done but they “have to have some guidance and some direction in order to be able to complete our work — and we just simply don’t have it.”
“Quit finding more reasons why we can’t get our work done,” Womack said. “It’s either, ‘Get it after the election,’ ‘Do it after we swear in the new Congress,’ ‘Do it after we swear in a new president,’ ‘Do it after, fill in the blank.’”
“And I’m just completely tired of this ongoing kick-the-can-down-the-road mentality that we operate under,” he continued.
It isn’t difficult to find Republicans questioning the wisdom of, once again, delaying a final spending deal. Many lawmakers are dubious of setting up a deadline during the first weeks of Trump’s presidency. Republicans told NOTUS it would distract the new president from enacting other parts of his agenda, and that Trump and the new Congress likely wouldn’t get a more conservative spending deal just because there was a new president.
With just that one-vote majority in the House — and a Senate majority well short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster — GOP leaders may be inadvertently setting up Trump and Republicans to take the blame for a shutdown, particularly if the party gets overly ambitious trying to enact spending cuts or funding Trump’s more contentious priorities.
So why are Republicans headed toward a three-month stopgap? GOP lawmakers and aides suggested the answer had a lot less to do with passing the best policy and a lot more to do with politics — specifically, the politics surrounding the speaker’s election.
In just a few short weeks, the new Congress will be seated and Mike Johnson will have to be reaffirmed as speaker. The last time he faced a vote on his speakership, Johnson survived because the vast majority of Democrats voted with Republicans to table a motion to vacate. Eleven Republicans voted to remove Johnson — more than enough if Democrats hadn’t saved the speaker.
This time, Johnson is unlikely to get Democratic help. And that has left him doing everything he can to quell an uprising.
“It’s very clear this is to protect the speaker, to keep his seat, because of a promise he made to never pass an end-of-the-year package,” one GOP member who was granted anonymity to discuss the situation told NOTUS. “That’s all and that’s it.”
This Republican lawmaker added that it was “illogical” to pass a continuing resolution, claiming it would “slow down” Trump during his first 100 days.
Another House Republican suggested the only reason Johnson was going down this path was that a CR “avoids a motion to vacate.”
“We should clear the decks and move on,” this senior GOP lawmaker said.
Johnson, for his part, pushed back on the assertion that he’s doing a short-term CR because he’s worried about his speakership.
“If you do a CR to September, you put too much of that burden into the new administration,” Johnson said. “Even though the deadline will be set, I’m sure, in March, there’s a hope and an expectation we will get done much sooner.”
While Johnson may ignore the ramifications of the funding battle, a GOP House leadership aide suggested there was a tie between the deadline and Johnson’s job security. “What hurts Trump’s first 100 days more,” the leadership aide asked, “a drawn-out leadership fight in January or the opportunity to work with his administration to fund the government?”
Conservatives inside and outside of Congress have traditionally balked at year-end spending deals, arguing that lawmakers feel pressure to get home for the holidays and are eager to just get out of town rather than fight excessive spending.
Johnson is well aware of the potential ramifications of a year-end omnibus bill. And he knows passing such a deal could damage his reputation just a couple weeks before he comes before the House for a vote on his speakership. He also knows Trump is an important ally to have in helping him keep his job. Appeasing the president-elect is critical. So if Trump actually wanted to “clear the decks,” Johnson would have little choice but to oblige.
But the upside for Johnson delaying the inevitable fight is obvious. The very Republicans most likely to sink his speakership are supportive of the three-month CR.
Supporters of such an approach are the same people that Johnson needs on his side to avoid a speaker fight: the House Freedom Caucus.
Rep. Andy Harris, the chair of the group, said he thinks “the idea of freezing government spending until the next administration comes into town is not a bad idea.”
Harris expressed support for Johnson’s plan. As did Rep. Andrew Clyde, another Freedom Caucus member. Clyde said it “only makes sense” to do a three-month CR.
“In my opinion, it’s more work,” Clyde said. “But I didn’t come here to not work.”
So far, Trump has stuck with Johnson, staying quiet about establishing a funding deadline at the beginning of his presidency.
Whether that’s wise remains to be seen. But plenty of Republicans think there is a lot of downside.
Rep. Andy Barr, who is running to lead the Financial Services Committee, told NOTUS that any CR is “bad for national security” and wasn’t “to the incoming administration’s advantage,” though Barr’s office later clarified that the congressman will support the CR.
“We’re going to have a very aggressive first-100-day agenda,” Barr said. “It would be best if we had cleared the decks and were able to move on our 100-day agenda and not be fighting last year’s battle.”
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.