With their backs yet again up against the wall, the House and Senate on Thursday extended Congress’ self-imposed deadline to keep the federal government open and fully funded. It’s the second time in his short tenure atop the House GOP that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has agreed to allow a clean funding bill to pass with mostly Democratic votes. This has not endeared Johnson to the far-right wing of his caucus, which is once again bandying about dark warnings of consequences for the speaker.
This dynamic will likely haunt Johnson for the remainder of his time as speaker, and follow any Republican successor when Johnson eventually steps down. There is no avoiding that the role of speaker of the House is divided between priorities that can be at odds. Johnson is showing that once again the greatest weakness to a Republican speaker is that push and pull between his role as a political leader and his responsibility to the country writ large.
The greatest weakness to a Republican speaker is that push and pull between his role as a political leader and his responsibility to the country writ large.
We were last here in November when Congress approved a short-term spending bill, or continuing resolution, that split the funding into two tranches, each with its own expiration date. The first tranche — which included funding covered in the Agriculture, Energy and Water, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and Transportation-Housing and Urban Development appropriations bills — was set to lapse at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. If it had, the areas of the federal government those bills covered would have been forced into a shutdown.
The new extension — which passed the House with a vote of 314-108 after sailing through the Senate — bumps that deadline back to March 1 and moves the second deadline from Feb. 2 to March 8. The bill had to bypass the Rules Committee, which is stacked with hard-liners who would have prevented the bill from coming to the floor, requiring a…
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