Government Shutdown Debate Fuels House Republican Civil War

Conservative spending hawks in the House of Representatives bucked party leadership today—derailing a series of votes—in protest of Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent spending deal with Democratic leadership that they feel does not go far enough in fiscal reductions.

While the Louisiana Republican can avoid confronting the issue for now, on January 19 the country will face its deadline to pass four of 12 annual spending bills. Johnson has publicly stated that he would not support a “continuing resolution” (CR) to extend the deadline on these four bills to the February 2 due date for the remaining eight.

However, with that deadline just 9 days away, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has said Congress will need to pass a CR to keep things open, meaning the speaker may soon break a promise he made, largely to appease his right flank. Such a maneuver could ignite a heated ideological battle in a closely divided House over the GOP’s role in spending cuts that may see the government face a partial shutdown or Johnson removed from his job.

“I’ve been very clear that CRs are not the way to fund our government that the Budget Act of 1974 calls for us to pass the 12 appropriation bills,” Congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana told Newsweek. “We’ve had ample time to do that, and if the leadership does not direct the committees to get the work done and the members to be able to vote upon it, that therein lies the breakdown.”

Rosendale, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, was one of the individuals who derailed the Wednesday votes. He views the top line number in Johnson’s deal as being too high and as doing too little to cut the $34 trillion national debt.

Rosendale was also among the 71 Republicans who opposed the Fiscal Responsibility Act struck between Democrats and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a deal that set the parameters for Johnson’s recent negotiation with Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer.

Johnson celebrated his deal for cutting an estimated $16 billion in spending, but the Freedom Caucus believes he could have gotten more. Moderate Republicans who backed McCarthy’s deal see that stance as unrealistic and running counter to the Republican goal of forcing Congress to pass the 12 individual spending bills as opposed to the “omnibus” measure of recent years, which combined those 12 bills into one vote.

“New year, same idiotic behavior by some,” New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler told Newsweek. “We’re not doing an omnibus, so each bill is going to have to be dealt with at conference and negotiated. Obviously, the reality is we’re probably gonna need more time to do that. And I don’t support a government shutdown, so I have no problem with doing a short-term CR that allows for this process to be completed.”

Congress has not passed all 12 bills individually since 1996. Lawler said it’s worth delaying passage of four of the bills to ensure the process is done right. If Congress cannot pass the 12 bills by December, under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a 1 percent budget cut would be applied to defense and non-defense discretionary spending.

Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of the Republican Party’s most vocal budget hawks but not among those who protested the Wednesday vote, said a yearlong CR that triggers the 1 percent spending cut may be the most feasible way to keep the government open while ending ongoing “brinkmanship.”

However, he said the most “responsible way” to cut spending would be to pass all 12 bills. With many Republicans reticent to see a shutdown and a 1 percent cut to defense spending, the urgency to pass the bills could see enough Republicans ally with Democrats to extend the deadline on the four spending bills and reach an agreement to fund the government, even if doing so puts Johnson in hot water with some of those on the hard right.

“That [1 percent cut] is supposed to be motivation and leverage to get 12 separate bills done,” Massie told Newsweek. “So, I think we could do a one-year CR, we can argue, and then we hit that tiny little bump in the road, then hopefully everybody’s motivated to come to their senses. That’s the way I would do it.”