GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have long assumed that at least a couple dozen House Republicans — from about 2011 until the end of time — would always vote against anything resembling a “continuing resolution.”
Conservative sticklers have built a political brand around decrying CRs as a dereliction of Congress’ appropriating duties. Eight Republicans — including four current members — tossed out former Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the egregious sin of putting a six-week funding extension on the House floor. And these Republicans demanded commitments from his replacement, Mike Johnson, that he would change Washington’s can-kicking ways and return Congress to “regular order.”
But on Tuesday, it wasn’t Johnson who changed; it was the conservative sticklers.
The House voted 217-213 on the GOP’s government funding bill, with 216 Republicans and one Democrat (Rep. Jared Golden) voting yes, and 212 Democrats and one Republican (Rep. Thomas Massie) voting no, sending the measure to the Senate where Democrats will be faced with a difficult choice: support the Republican bill or dramatically increase the odds of a government shutdown.
After Johnson repeatedly pursued short-term government funding bills, to the seeming chagrin of conservative purists, he put a six-and-a-half-month funding measure on the floor Tuesday, presenting it as CR that cuts current spending by $8 billion, and all but one Republican supported it.
In reality, the bill may be closer to an omnibus spending package than a simple CR, with the legislation changing hundreds of spending line-items — some more and some less — while mostly amending the language used in the last omnibus.
The difference this time, however, is that Democrats played no part in the spending package. Republicans shut them out from drafting the language and unilaterally made all the spending decisions. The GOP zeroed out nearly two dozen programs and wrote a bill with significant “anomalies,” meaning it wasn’t just an extension of current funding.
Those changes led all but one Democrat to oppose the bill. And it could lead Democrats in the Senate to block the legislation, though Sen. John Fetterman has already said he will support the bill, and other Democrats very well may join him.
In an effort to encourage just that sort of behavior, GOP leaders immediately dismissed lawmakers for the rest of the week after the bill passed Tuesday night, attempting to jam the Senate.
But Johnson’s ability to get the bill even this far is a testament to a remarkable change of heart among conservatives — a change of heart perhaps best displayed Tuesday when House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris joined Johnson and other GOP leaders at a press conference to tout the bill.
“What’s the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus doing at a press conference about continuing resolutions?” Harris said Tuesday. “Well, I’ll tell you: The bottom line is that a continuing resolution is usually the first step to an omnibus bill.”
He said, because this bill “negates” the need for an omnibus, conservatives had a much easier time supporting it.
“This is not your grandfather’s continuing resolution,” Harris said.
But there’s also another, perhaps much bigger reason almost every Republican got in line: President Donald Trump.
Trump personally got involved in lobbying for the legislation, making it clear that he wanted to avoid a shutdown. His White House held a meeting last week with the normal CR holdouts. His staff worked individual members. His vice president, JD Vance, showed up for a closed-door meeting Tuesday to push for support. And his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, got on the phone with Rep. Tim Burchett — who had never previously voted for a CR — to explain the effect the legislation would have at the Pentagon.
Trump also orchestrated a public pressure campaign. He threatened to fund a primary against defectors, taking particular aim at the lone Republican no vote, Massie, by soliciting interest from potential challengers in Kentucky.
“Great things are coming to America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order,” Trump posted Saturday on Truth Social.
“We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right,” he said.
Rep. Kat Cammack, one of the last holdouts, told reporters Tuesday morning that she had “seen some bullshit” on spending during her eight years as a staffer and four years as a legislator. She sought assurances from the White House that appropriations talks would continue, lamenting to reporters that “we need a top line.”
By Tuesday evening, however, she backed the legislation, citing assurances from Vance during the conference-wide meeting and from other top White House officials during meetings later in the day.
Trump himself also eventually called certain Republicans, according to a source familiar with the discussions. And Burchett, who was one of those Republicans to get a call, said he was “very convincing.”
But it should be no surprise that Republicans find Trump convincing.
“At the end of the day, this is Trump’s conference,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison — another CR skeptic — told NOTUS.
Trump, of course, may have been an operative reason for Democrats to vote no.
Rep. Chip Roy — another vociferous CR hater — noted on the House floor Tuesday that “literally every single Democrat voted for the CR that we just had in December.”
“Now we have a presidential administration that is trying to do the job that they sent him there to do,” Roy said.
Democrats countered that this bill was clearly different from the CR in December, that the legislation at the end of the year was to give appropriators more time to work out a spending deal. This bill is to end the negotiations.
The funding legislation also would free up Trump and Elon Musk to continue gutting the federal workforce without congressional intervention, a key sticking point for Democrats who wanted to clarify in the legislation that the executive branch can’t overrule Congress on spending it directs.
To Democrats, GOP leadership’s move to override bipartisan, bicameral appropriations talks with a partisan spending plan represents the height of hypocrisy.
“Johnson has had this time to put individual spending bills on the floor, but now he’s doing the status quo, which is what apparently the American people voted against,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz said Monday, leveling what has been a ubiquitous GOP refrain against his colleagues.
“We’re now going to watch these 30 Republicans who don’t vote for CRs, some of these hardcore folks, capitulate,” he continued. “We don’t need to hear it from them that we can’t keep the government open by CR anymore when that’s exactly what they’re going to do. But I’m not partaking.”
Of course, those “hardcore folks” don’t see their vote as the capitulation Moskowitz described. They insist that they’re just briefly sacrificing their principles in the name of a more noble pursuit: codifying Trump’s agenda.
And as for Johnson, Rep. Eli Crane — who voted for McCarthy’s ouster over CRs but backed the spending bill Tuesday — said the speaker has been precisely the foot soldier Trump needs.
“He’s doing a good job trying to consolidate support around President Trump’s play call,” Crane told NOTUS.
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Reese Gorman, who is a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this report.