House Speaker Mike Johnson appeared on Fox News last week and expressed great optimism about his party and its prospects in the new Congress. “Look, we’re excited about this,” the Louisiana Republican declared. “We’ve demonstrated already that we can govern with a small majority.”
He’s been saying that a lot lately. Johnson is clearly aware that the GOP will have a vanishingly small majority in the new year, but the top Republican lawmaker on Capitol Hill keeps assuring the public that he and his party “know how to govern with that small majority.”
Part of the problem with the claim is that recent history points in the opposite direction: As the current Congress prepares to wrap up, the House Republican majority has effectively no accomplishments to speak of, and Johnson has repeatedly had to rely on the Democratic minority to advance must-pass bills.
But it’s not just the recent past that contradicts the House speaker’s boasts; it’s also the present. The Washington Post summarized where things stand nicely:
The federal government is careening toward a weekend government shutdown deadline as congressional Republicans, egged on by President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, feud over legislation to keep agencies open over the Christmas holiday. Republicans on Wednesday rejected a plan by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) for a three-month stopgap funding extension, called a continuing resolution or CR, with more than $100 billion in aid for natural disaster survivors, bipartisan health-care policy changes and other unrelated provisions.
It’s a story with several moving parts, so let’s unpack this.
Didn’t the parties already agree to a bipartisan deal?
Yes. After several weeks of uncertainty, Democratic and Republican leaders — from both chambers — announced a compromise package that would prevent a government shutdown, and extend the next deadline until March.
Isn’t this what most Republicans wanted?
Sort of. Johnson and his leadership team had to decide whether to pursue a spending package that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year in late September or a stopgap bill — called a “continuing resolution” (or “CR”) — that would keep the lights on until March. Rank-and-file GOP lawmakers wanted the latter, assuming that the Trump White House and Republican-led Congress would be able to write a better bill.
But?
But that meant the House speaker had to make concessions to Democrats, who still control the Senate and White House, and whose votes would obviously be needed to pass a temporary package.
If there’s a bipartisan agreement in place, what’s the problem?
A great many House Republicans are refusing to support the bill negotiated by their own leaders. Just as importantly, conspiratorial billionaire Elon Musk decided to go after the bipartisan bill, relying on several demonstrably false claims about the legislative details, which helped fuel a far-right backlash.
And Trump?
After Musk launched an aggressive campaign against the bill, the president-elect followed suit, started making new demands of his own — including, oddly enough, a call for a debt ceiling increase, which struck members of both parties as bizarre — and even started threatening primary challenges against GOP lawmakers who defy his wishes.
So the bipartisan agreement is dead? Officially, no, since it hasn’t come to the floor for a vote, but both parties agree that the legislation is, at best, on life support, and it’s unlikely to survive in its current form. What do Democrats want to see happen? Their position is simple: Democrats negotiated in good faith, struck a deal, and remain ready to honor that deal. They want Republicans to do the same. What do Republicans want to see happen? Well, that’s a moving target. Different players within the GOP want different things, though the common thread seems to be that Republicans would like Democrats to (a) abandon all of the things the House speaker agreed to give them, and (b) help pass a CR anyway. Would Democrats go along with this? Almost certainly not. Musk, Trump and rank-and-file GOP members of Congress created this mess, and Democrats see no reason to help them clean it up in exchange for nothing. What now? No one seems able to answer that question with confidence, but the clock is ticking: The deadline for the government shutdown is midnight Friday.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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