Speaker Johnson Faces Retaliation Over Short-Term Spending Bill
“Once again, we passed a significant piece of legislation that keeps in place, with predominately Democrat votes, policies that were ran against and campaigned against.”
Speaker Mike Johnson faces retaliation from the House Freedom Caucus and other Republicans after the chamber passed the continuing resolution (CR), a short-term government funding bill.
The bill passed with MORE Democrats voting for it! Republicans have the majority. Yeah, it’s two seats, but nothing should pass with more Democrat votes than Republican.
These Republicans are tired of spending and an open border. It’s also a promise Johnson broke. He swore he wouldn’t push through these short-term spending bills.
(Another reminder to politicians to never make promises!)
The news should not shock Johnson. The House Freedom Caucus warned leadership about any bill that increases spending and doesn’t address the border.
But it’s not just the House Freedom Caucus. 106 Republicans voted against Johnson, including some allies.
Today, the House Freedom Caucus released the following official position urging Republicans to uphold commitments to end inflationary spending and secure the border. All conservatives should oppose the Johnson-Schumer CR. pic.twitter.com/CwZTpqceId
— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) January 18, 2024
If you voted for this CR you do not care about fixing America’s over $34 trillion in debt.
The D.C. Cartel just voted to extend Nancy Pelosi’s budget and Joe Biden’s policies.
This is a bad day for America. pic.twitter.com/eLL4mkwd2N
— Matt Rosendale (@RepRosendale) January 18, 2024
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good (R-VA) told Fox News Digital:
“Once again, we passed a significant piece of legislation that keeps in place, with predominately Democrat votes, policies that were ran against and campaigned against,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., told Fox News Digital after the vote.
“If you don’t need our votes for the significant pieces of legislation that impact the country, that fund the government, and you’re going to pass those with Democrat votes on suspension, then you shouldn’t presume that you’ve got our votes for the meaningless messaging bills that are dead on arrival in the Senate.”
Good tried to convince Johnson to put the CR through the House Rules Committee. The Republicans would have attached H.R. 2, a border security bill.
The Democrat-controlled Senate would not have even brought it to the floor.
It would have caused a government shutdown.
The caucus and those who voted against the funding bill do not care:
“If they don’t want to shut down the border, then it’s on them to shut down the government…the discussion is that if the speaker isn’t going to take some of those reasonable, conservative asks, then why are we going to continue this charade?” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., said.
“We need to discuss it as a whole, but the idea is…hold up bills until they decide that H.R.2 is the priority.”
These Republicans also hate how leadership bypassed the procedural votes most bills have to pass.
They’re worried the leadership will continue to pass fiscal “bills under suspension of the rules.” Not cool:
“I hope he doesn’t. He doesn’t need to do that. I mean, his base is conservatives and Speaker Johnson is a conservative,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said. “But I don’t like the suspension. I don’t like using Democrats to pass bills.”
Asked whether he and other hardliners could stage more protest votes down the line in response, Norman said the Freedom Caucus would “discuss that.”
Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., another Freedom Caucus member, refused to say whether she would sink rule votes in exchange for the CR’s package.
When asked whether Johnson would face consequences, however, she said, “There’s always repercussions to everything we do. But the biggest thing to focus on is that the border is open. It is a disaster. It’s hard to come up with the adequate terms to describe how ruinous it is to our country, and to future generations. The impact is incalculable.”
Johnson lost many Republicans, including those who chair committees and should be counted as his allies:
→ Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (Texas)
→ Veterans Affairs Chair Mike Bost (Ill.)
→ Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), the chair of the China Select Committee
→ Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (Tenn.)
→ Ethics Chair Mike Guest (Miss.)
→ Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (Ohio)
→ Administration Chair Brian Steil (Wis.)
→ Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (Ark.)
→ Small Business Chair Roger Williams (Texas)
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Comments
As he should but I think McCarthy is definitely behind this sabotage
Anybody who asked for your 2 cents got short changed.
Everyone here on LI thought that Johnson was an angel from heaven, via Trump and Johnson’s undying support of f Trump. . It’s time to live in the real world. Trump supported Johnson. You need to own this.
These last two spending bills were clear betrayals and monuments to the cowardice of Mike Johnson.
I heard him yapping about “proving we can govern” as some sort of justification for this back-stabbing, America-killing idiocy. Prove it to whom? All he proved was that he represents Democrats and the AMerica-hating left more than anyone (since that is where he’s getting all of his votes from).
I believe that Johnson is conservative, but the sad fact is that he is a coward. That’s why he folds to the left like a cheap suit. He’s scared to fight for what’s right.
Perhaps we, as a nation, could write a sternly-worded letter to Speaker Gowdy…er, Johnson…and express our displeasure.
But he should be doing is buckling down with the Committees and getting the spending bills passed so that we can have regular order for the first time in forever. No more of these stupid continuing resolutions
Could we stop pretending he is a wizard? We don’t have the senate, and we don’t have the presidency either. What do you want? An indefinite shutdown followed by a 50 state sweep by Biden 2024?
These are two different things. Stop pushing through CR’s where Republicans get nothing in return.
And if we are going to get nothing in return then shut the whole f88king show down and be done with it. If you think 10% China Joe is going to get 50 states then I’ve got some green cheese and ham from the moon for you buy.
So you want an indefinite shut down followed by Biden crushing Trump?
It is because Speaker Johnson lives on planet Earth instead of where you live that Biden will not be winning 50 states because he is NOT doing your idea of an indefinite shut down.
Johnson’s job is to run the house. If the house passes a budget bill and the Senate won’t pick it up that’s the senate’s problem and if the pedophile in the White House won’t sign it that’s the pedophiles problem
You were willing to pretend McCarthy was president, speaker, and senate majority leader, please don’t repeat the same mistake with Johnson. A government shut down gets us nothing, while also sticks us with a Biden second term. Please stop deluding yourself about the power a house speaker with a tiny majority could do.
Even a MAJORITY of California Democrats believe that border is not secure. There’s overwhelming national anger over the state of our border. If there would ever be an opportunity to leverage a government shutdown into a winning issue, this is that opportunity.
Let’s face reality. The Dems would be *overjoyed* to see a government shutdown. Every media organ of theirs would happily yack about how evil MAGA Republicans are strangling children and kicking old people out of hospitals 24/7. They *believe* this (censored).
Speaker Johnson cannot craft a bill that will make the conservatives happy and still pass. There’s a tipping point where he can get two Dems to sign on for every conservative he loses, but the Dems in general are willing to run the extortion game right up to the shutdown point if it will get them more gravy for their rice bowl.
The difference between McCarthy and Johnson is *this* Speaker is more focused on his own party. McCarthy was a real good speaker, but when time came to act, he didn’t even try to make it look like a fair fight. He went right over to the Dems and they knew it.
I’m convinced about 80% of the “Speaker Johnson must go” screamers are Dems pretending to be Republicans. Insert meme about guy on bike sticking a stick in his own spokes here.
Unfortunately the people here doing it are Republicans, they have been posting here for a long time. I lot of Republicans just live on a different planet and have decided Speaker Johnson is a wizard and if he doesn’t use his magic to solve all of our problems it is because he is a rino.
I call it the aesthetic caucus. The aesthetic of being betrayed matters more to them than say getting our chance to fix all of these issues by winning in November and trying our hardest with the tools we have (instead of tools they imagine) in the meantime.
To those who say that the Pubs don’t have the Senate or Presidency, a gentle reminder:
The Pubs also don’t have the House.
Look at the screen capture on the vote. The Pubs are divided about 50-50. The two sides can’t in unison. It’s not even close.
I don’t see the present Speaker or any other speaker fixing that divide.
The Pubs need to decide who and what they are, and then they need to get people into the House that vote one way, not two (or ten) ways.
You’ll notice the Dems rarely have this problem. Whatever their personal beliefs are, when it’s time to vote the regular members do as they’re told by the leadership. That’s how their party works.
I won’t say that the Pubs need to be like the Dems, but until they have party discipline you won’t see them standing up to the Senate or the President.
Here is how the game is played, In September 2023 the house passes a bill, in this case H2872 is the bill, it deals with amending a law passed in 2013, Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act of 2013 to allow States to issue electronic stamps under such Act, and for other purposes, as amended.. I never knew that other purposes meant funding much of the government.
So this bill is sent over to the senate where it just sits on Schumer’s desk with no intent to move on it. Now the Congress is up against a deadline to fund the government. They go out and pull H2872 out of the pile and attach an amendment to it,, in this case SA 1381 and this amendment, that has nothing to do with the bill all of a sudden funds the government until March 2024. This amendment is passed by unanimous consent, When the bill came to floor they allowed for a grand total of six minutes of debate after the CR was attached ( this is directly from the Congressional record).
This was nearly all done behind closed doors.
How about a discussion on what particular programs and ‘sacred cow’ funding we agree on here at LI that WE are willing to see CUT, not just growth in future spending reduced, to accomplish the goal.
That’s the rub. We gotta cut spending. Gonna be programs that lose funding/are eliminated and no winners of additional funding. Not very popular with most voters. Everyone has something that is ‘too important’ or ‘too vital’ to cut. We can all name other things for the chopping block but usually not ‘our’ programs.
They gave plenty of real estate that is no longer in use that can be sold off or leased out. They have plenty of unused office space that they are leasing. That is one example of waste. We have too many departments that overlap in responsibility. Why do we need a department of education, Why are we sending billions of dollars to countries , fund and or pay dues to corrupt world organizations.
Foreign aid is a fraction of the amount needed to make a.difference. Obviously as we downsize the scope of gov’t we reduce the # of fed employees and have far less need for office space.
We should absolutely cut waste. Though making the current scope of Fed gov’t more ‘efficient’ isn’t what I am talking about, even minus Dept ED we gonna have have to cut much more.
I agree that much of the spending is baked in, things like Social Security, debt interest, it can’t be reduced. Another front that needs to be addressed is on the revenue side, the feds are taking in records amount of money they also leave a lot of cash on the table. Do the feds have any plan to recover the gas tax revenue that electric cars do not produce, it is quite the opposite, they are subsidizing those things. Those cars are actually heavier than an ICE vehicle and the roads will wear out quicker.
Then you will have a loss of revenue as more class 8 vehicles are on the road. An interesting fight in the near future will be the amount of weight a vehicle can be. Unless you get a special permit that limit is 80k lbs, truck, trailer and cargo combined, since the batteries are much heavier than a diesel rig will they fight to raise that 80k limit which will wear the roads out faster requiring more money to maintain them.
I felt that 25 years blew it big time big not creating some type of tax on internet transactions, even some small transaction tax could have brought in tens of trillions by now.
Kinda sorta. In FY 23 the Fed Gov’t spent $6.134 Trillion. Total revenue for the year was $4.439 Trillion. Leaving an annual deficit of $1.695 Trillion.
The foreign aid budget is about $60 billion. Add in $100 billion for Ukraine. Get rid of both and we still have a structural deficit of over $1.5 trillion each year. What we gonna cut? Gonna have to be painful cuts to make a dent. Not for nothing but getting into balance gonna require 25%+ across the board cuts ($1.5+ trillion is 25% of the $6 Trillion in spending even AFTER zeroing out Foreign Aid +Ukraine spending.
The DoD budget for FY 23 was about $960 billion, it will be just under $1 Trillion this year. Our interest cost to finance the federal debt of $34+ Trillion is gonna be over $1 Trillion. Social Security ain’t part of the total debt numbers.
Currently Social Security has sufficient revenue from contributions + redemptions of the accumulated assets of prior excess contributions to the ‘trust fund’ to pay out 100% for less than a decade. At that point ALL the accumulated prior excess SSI assets will be sold off. SSI can then pay about 75% of what recipients would get from ongoing SSI tax revenue.
Politically, that’s a problem. Folks gonna get PO. Even the folks who for decades refused all efforts to make reforms. IMO, especially those folks. They seem to believe in magic or that the fairies godmother gonna make up the shortfall.
Social Security has roughly $3 Trillion in assets. For scale the total amount of Student Loan debt is about $1.3 Trillion. It’s a lot of money in isolation but not enough to cover the ‘obligation’. FWIW there is not any legal obligation to be paid SSI, morally? Sure, but not legally.
That’s why I led with the question of what WE are willing to see cut from among the programs we feel are justified and/or benefit ‘our’ side. Gonna have to offer up cuts to programs we approve of to get it done. The argument that getting rid of ‘waste, fraud and abuse and foreign aid’ will do it is just not accurate. The structural problems are too big to do otherwise.
And this ‘continuing resolution’ and ‘short term spending bill’ omnibus crap stops us from having EXACTLY that discussion.
Enough with this omnibus crap where they cram in absolutely everything possible specifically to avoid debate.
Every department needs to get funded INDIVIDUALLY for us to even start to have that discussion.
Which is exactly why RINO trash like McCarthy and McConnell don’t want it to happen.
Agreed. Regular order and separate appropriation bills should be step one.
I would start with everything that’s in the federal government that’s not specifically enabled in the Constitution or any of it’s amendments. Also, all of the welfare programs
As an end state goal, absolutely. Which three do you start with, who will line up on the opposite side to prevent it? Which particular members of Congress from which CD and States and what interest groups? That’s important to know b/c then we can seek to replace the members and figure out a strategy to blunt the PR war and heavy criticism to actually accomplish it.
Here is my plan
1. Cut military budget because that way the population will see the universally favorite toy of the government is being cut, when they see that they will know it is balancing the budget even if they know they will be negatively impacted.
2. Symbolic cuts-Let the people see that the desire to balance the budget is real a second time before it impacts them
3. Entitlement reform to try and bring benefits provided by government to a sustainable price tag-This is of course the part nobody could agree to do, which Trump is against but if we do not do this we will go bankrupt. This will be every program and will likely leave the president who does it out of a job.
That is also why I really don’t take people insisting Johnson is a RINO if spending goes up seriously. They aren’t in favor of actually cutting spending they just want someone to blame as if identical programs would be different if their magic prince was the speaker of the house.
Thanks. IMO gonna take much more than just reduced military spending. The total DoD budget is just about $1 Trillion. Realistically a 20% cut would be the deepest we could go. That’s gonna be mostly on the Army side getting rid of personnel costs. The Navy and AF are underfunded IMO based on the mission set. USMC could probably be cut down to embassy, fleet force including MEUs at sea with one reinforced BDE on the East coast, one on the West Coast and one in HI/Guam elsewhere in the Pacific.
Entitlement reform is gonna take more political will than our leadership possess. As you correctly point out anyone trying is gonna get ‘unelected’. Trump, b/c he will not be running for re-election should he win in ’24, is perfectly positioned to do it…but he doesn’t seem to be willing based on his campaign messages. I don’t blame him, its just the nature of the political reality that voters LIKE their ‘free stuff’ while simultaneously disapproving of OTHER folks getting ‘free stuff’.
I said military as one because I don’t think the people will accept a government that calls on them to make a sacrifice without making a sacrifice of it’s own.
That said entitlement reform will have to be what saves us from bankruptcy because that is what we are spending money on. The reason military spending cuts are important is I don’t think there is a way the citizen body agrees to entitlement changes that hurt them without it.
Similar to the way Louis XIV had to publicly start getting rid of his own possessions when he taxed the people of France for his wars. Louis did not raise a lot of money for his wars selling off or scrapping parts of his art collection but he did make his subjects a lot more willing to sacrifice by also joining the sacrifice game.
We also have to stop with the tax cut fetish. Nobody is going to agree to lose some of their benefits to pay for somebody else getting a tax cut (remember the portion of Americans who pay federal tax at all?).
Revealed today on another site is the fact that the U.S. Taxpayer via it alleged “representatives” in Congress sends borrowed funds to Nazi Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum (WEF). That is absurd as funding Planned Parenthood and the Ukraine.
We need to get control of the Republic’s Credit Card from these Morons and start the process of eliminating about 80% of the Feral Leviathan. SHUT IT ALL DOWN AND MAKE SURE THAT THE 800,000+ NON ESSENTIAL FERAL EMPLOYEES DO NOT GET PAID FOR THEIR TIME OFF LIKE THE LAST TIME, THUS AMOUNTING TO A TAXPAYER FUNDED VACATION.
Sure, but as much as you and I may agree on that the Federal employee unions most definitely don’t nor do their very powerful advocates in office.
As I mentioned above cutting the $60 billion of foreign aid +$100 billion ish for Ukraine doesn’t even get us close. We would still have a structural deficit of over one and a half $Trillion just this year.
Next year, FY 25, it will be worse b/c about 20% of the federal debt rolls over. It was borrowed at much lower interest rates and we gonna have to pay essentially triple what that portion previous cost. So add another 1/4 $Trillion (+/-) for that alone.
The only way out is for cuts to things we approve of as well those things we don’t approve of. It’s gonna be painful for everyone. The Feds been handing out $ to NGOs, State Gov’t and Local Gov’t and much of that will have to be cut. Many of the services those Federal $ provided will still be needed but now the bill will fall on State and Local taxpayers to fill void.
That’s another point most folks don’t grasp. Getting the Federal budget into balance will also place greater demand on local and State taxpayers. We all wear multiple ‘hats’; Fed Taxpayer, State Taxpayer, Local Taxpayer, consumer of gov’t services, consumer of private enterprise. In addition some are young students, some are retired some work full time some part time others not at all.
In many respects truly meaningful cuts at the Federal level will be offset by increased State and local spending and taxes will rise to pay for it. It will be painful for everyone.
How many times in the last half century have the Republicans in Congress promised to fight for what they campaigned for? And how many times have they done it?
But it feels more 1850’s-ish of late.
Subotai Bahadur
Yeah lots of parallels to the Whigs in the era after the nullification crisis re the Tariff of Abominations leading up to the Civil War. Lots of upheaval in the make up of the political parties and their core beliefs.
The GoP is at a crossroads. The base is far more in favor of economic populism than many of its elected officials who hail from an outdated era. Look at Haley as an example of this; she is pro amnesty, wants increased immigration, pro forever war/neocon and pro globalism. Those are not the positions of the base but of the establishment. It ain’t the late ’90s or early ’00s anymore but she seems oblivious to the changes, as does the establishment.
And how will they balance the budget without cutting any entitlement spending, or the military?
Make people give mutually contradictory promises and one will not be kept while the other will be.
Speaker Johnson has got to go. Not for the CR crap, he needs to go for allowing the Patriot Act to be renewed. The Patriot Act is what allows the deep state to spy on every one of us. Cell phones, emails, banking/credit card transactions. Let’s face it the intel community owns Congress and the Senate. Depressing state of affairs. I’m going to watch some Benny Hill rerun reels on FB and have a few adult cocktails. Because in the end it’s all mental masturbation. FJB
I agree we do not to get rid of the patriot act.
Finding a speaker willing to do that is a job for the next president.
Sorry but unless you think it will happen between now and November why on Earth would you want to make the election cycle easier for Democrats?
I wish it had been DeSantis instead of Trump but it looks decided, so if you object to the Patriot Act Trump had the Patriot Act abused against him hopefully on this he will be standing strong. I am not bullish on Trump’s chances, but chance of winning if we make ourselves a clown show of revolving door house speakers goes down a lot.
97% of Democrats in the House voted for it.
48% of Republicans in the House voted for it.
That tells you everything you need to know about what a piece of crap this bill was.
We are doomed if ANY elected official supports continued spending and greater debt.