{"id":20180,"date":"2023-11-14T02:03:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T08:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=20180"},"modified":"2023-11-14T02:03:28","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T08:03:28","slug":"government-shutdown-looms-as-new-speaker-struggles-to-control-hardliners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=20180","title":{"rendered":"Government shutdown looms as new speaker struggles to control hardliners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New House Speaker Mike Johnson may already be losing his first big clash<\/a> with the hard-right lawmakers who are making the Republican majority and the nation ungovernable as time races down to yet another federal funding cut-off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Louisiana conservative, who was just lifted from obscurity to second in line to the presidency, may soon find himself in the position that doomed his predecessor Rep. Kevin McCarthy \u2014 needing Democratic votes to keep the government open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A funding deadline of Friday night means Washington again faces a wild ride of shutdown brinkmanship caused by extreme GOP lawmakers who either cannot or don\u2019t want to help run the country. The imbroglio is not just harming America\u2019s image as a functioning democracy abroad. It has already wasted every week of the House majority party\u2019s term since the summer and threatens to further weaken the key swing-district members critical to the GOP\u2019s hopes of keeping the gavel in next year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson on Saturday unveiled a complex two-tiered plan to temporarily fund the government<\/a>, with a pair of deadlines in January and February for the passage of permanent department budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move could head off the Washington holiday-season tradition of shutdown dramas and mammoth all-encompassing spending bills. But the chances that a GOP majority that has trouble passing any bill could deliver on this intricate plan seem very low. Given the House\u2019s record, Johnson may simply be setting the country up for two government shutdowns rather than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the two-step approach appears to be a concession to the far right \u2014 which abhors what it calls \u201cclean\u201d continuing resolutions, or CRs, that keep government open temporarily at current spending levels \u2014 Johnson\u2019s approach may already have backfired since it lacks the sweeping cuts that hard-right Republicans demanded even though they have no chance of getting them past a Democratic-run Senate and White House. \u201cIt\u2019s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,\u201d Freedom Caucus member and Texas Rep. Chip Roy wrote on X, conjuring up exactly the showdown that cost McCarthy his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson\u2019s task is so difficult because the tiny GOP majority means he can lose only a handful of members on any bill and still pass it with only Republican votes \u2013 hence the need to get help from Democrats on some issues and the consequent risk of further alienating far-right members of his conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The House Rules Committee will take the first step in considering Johnson\u2019s unconventional stop-gap bill Monday when it meets at 4 p.m. ET. The committee includes Roy, a public GOP opponent of the bill, and Johnson can only afford to lose three GOP votes in committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson\u2019s inheritance is nightmarish for a new speaker<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This mass of political complications means Johnson heads into a vital week for his leadership having no idea how it will end and facing the possibility that his nascent authority could soon be in tatters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time is critically short given the need to muscle a funding measure through both the House and Senate in five days. Johnson is hugely inexperienced and has no pedigree in manipulating his party\u2019s fractious majority or in finding legislative tricks that can unglue votes. Furthermore, the dynamics of a divided political system; a recalcitrant GOP right flank; splits between Republicans in the House and the Senate; and Democrats controlling the other chamber and the White House haven\u2019t changed since McCarthy\u2019s fall last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Johnson is left with the same unpromising set of conflicting forces that felled McCarthy and that may be unsolvable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political and geopolitical costs of this mess are only growing. The House\u2019s failure to govern means Israel is still waiting for an aid package as it battles Hamas in Gaza. (Johnson did pass $14.3 billion in aid for the Jewish state<\/a> but offset the funding with cuts to the Internal Revenue Service to appease hardline conservatives, making it a futile gesture the Senate won\u2019t accept.) Ukraine\u2019s hopes of receiving another massive US aid package are receding given the House\u2019s incapacity to act and increasing opposition to the lifeline among far-right conservatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the key question this week may be whether hardline Republicans will give their new leader any more leeway than they gave McCarthy and allow him to stave off his first crisis with some Democratic votes. Johnson comes from the far right himself. But any compromises with Democrats will begin the process of erosion of hardline support and Johnson\u2019s transformation in the eyes of right-wing backbenchers into an establishment figure guilty of wanting to govern. That\u2019s a slippery slope to potential attempts to oust him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Johnson\u2019s two-pronged approach \u2014 known, in a new contribution to the impenetrable lingo of Congress, as a \u201claddered CR\u201d \u2014 does have the virtue for Republicans of requiring House Democrats to consider their own political risks. Since the new speaker did not include massive spending cuts demanded by the hard right in his plan, Democrats could see their own political blowback if they do not back it. That\u2019s because a government shutdown could have broad impacts, including the eventual delay of pay to the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump looms over the House \u2013 and the year to come<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

House Democrats are yet to solidify their position but did note Saturday that spending cuts weren\u2019t included in Johnson\u2019s plan. The White House, however, issued a searing response to the proposal, calling it \u201ca recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns \u2013 full stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith just days left before an Extreme Republican Shutdown \u2014 and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader \u2014 House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties,\u201d White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u201cextreme\u201d \u2014 used twice in the statement \u2014 hints at the White House\u2019s strategic thinking. It fits with imagery President Joe Biden and his campaign are using in his escalating confrontation with ex-President Donald Trump, the runaway Republican front-runner two months before voting begins in the GOP primary. Facing alarming poll numbers \u2014 including a survey last week showing Trump beating him<\/a> in key swing states \u2014 Biden is keen on the comparison to the ex-president\u2019s extremism that helped him win the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump spent the weekend making Biden\u2019s point for him, vowing in language resonant of demagogic autocrats to root out \u201cradical left thugs that live like vermin\u201d<\/a> if he wins a second term and targeting special counsel Jack Smith<\/a> and his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump may also complicate things  for Johnson. The former president\u2019s influence on far-right Republicans is huge. In the funding drama that felled McCarthy, Trump called for a shutdown, perhaps reasoning that the chaos and potential economic damage could deepen feelings of national malaise that may boost his calls for strongman leadership. Already, one of Trump\u2019s most prominent acolytes, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, has blasted Johnson\u2019s plan as a \u201cclean CR.\u201d Greene also spent the weekend complaining that the new speaker wasn\u2019t rushing to reignite the GOP impeachment inquiry against Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson pleads for a break from his hardliners<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As with the White House, Johnson\u2019s language explains his strategy. \u201cI wasn\u2019t the architect of the mess we are in,\u201d he said on a GOP conference call Saturday. This approach can be read as a plea to Republicans \u2014 who voted for him amid exhaustion and frustration after weeks of feuding over the speakership \u2014 to give him time and space since he\u2019s new in the job. By recalling his poisoned inheritance, Johnson also reminds his troops of the chaos that could ensue all over again if they fail to back him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson also faces a complex set of scenarios in even getting his plan to a floor vote this week. And time is so short before Friday\u2019s deadline <\/strong>because the Senate is likely to adopt a contrary approach by passing a clean extension bill amid little enthusiasm among senators in both parties for Johnson\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are going to proceed in the Senate on a clean CR, without gimmicks, without ladders,\u201d Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said Sunday on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt does worry me that the House process requires you to come back and deal with half the budget on one date, and half the budget on another date. That sounds to me a little bit of a recipe for failure,\u201d Murphy said. Still, Murphy did not rule out Johnson\u2019s approach, adding that he was willing to \u201clisten to the case that they\u2019re making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But given the near-impossibility of outlining government funding that the most extreme members of the GOP majority will accept, it may already be too late for listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US government is back on the edge of a cliff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cnn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New House Speaker Mike Johnson may already be losing his first big clash with the hard-right lawmakers who are making the Republican majority and the nation ungovernable as time races down to yet another federal funding cut-off. The Louisiana conservative, who was just lifted from obscurity to second in line to the presidency, may soon find himself […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1490,24178,1268,21502,1878,23761,2891,5807,1227],"class_list":["post-20180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-administration","tag-fringe-policy","tag-government","tag-house","tag-johnson","tag-new-speaker","tag-politics","tag-shutdown","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20182,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20180\/revisions\/20182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}