Speaker Mike Johnson is caught in a bind as government funding runs out Friday and many Republicans have likened his massive last-minute spending package to a ‘dumpster fire.’
The speaker has navigated numerous funding battles this year and has repeatedly opted to approve continuing resolutions (CRs), which are measures that extend current funding levels.
Johnson is hoping to get another CR passed before midnight Friday to extend funding again for three months until March 14, meaning the incoming Trump administration will face a deadline in its first 100 days.
If the speaker doesn’t get the bill passed before funding expires on Friday then the government may partially shutdown.
As this deadline looms, many Republicans have voiced their opposition to Johnson’s planned CR, and with a slim majority of just a few votes, it is expected he will need Democrats to help him get this package across the finish line.
‘He knows he is in a box,’ South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus (HFC) member said Tuesday. ‘A lot of people are upset.’
Norman, like many other Republicans, said he would not vote for the speaker’s plan.
‘It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,’ Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., another HFC member, said of the CR.
‘1,500+ pages. Friday deadline,’ Burlison wrote on X, adding, ‘This town is beyond broken.’
The 1,547 page document was released by GOP leadership Tuesday evening.
Many members have expressed frustration this year with being forced to read through bible-sized bills without much time to digest their contents.
Johnson, for his part, has also expressed his distaste for the stop-gap funding CR plan.
In principle, we don’t like continuing resolutions, but in this case, as a Republican, as a conservative, it does make the most sense, and that’s why all the conservative groups are in favor of that idea,’ he said in a recent Fox News interview.
‘Because it allows us to make more of these key decisions in the new year, when we have the new Congress, new President, new Senate and House.’
Outspoken Johnson critic Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the speaker’s spending plan is forcing members eat a ‘crap sandwich.’
‘We get this negotiated crap, and we’re forced to eat this crap sandwich,’ he said. ‘It’s the same dang thing every year. Legislate by crisis, legislate by calendar. Not legislate because it’s the right thing to do.’
New York Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis posted on X: ‘Everything I am hearing about the CR thus far leads me to believe that I’ll be voting no. Republicans are in the majority and yet the Democrats seem to get more of their priorities in than we do.’
Many Republicans in conservative districts have taken up personal rules to vote against every CR attempt, seeing it as a lazy way of legislating that leads to additional government spending.
‘We always talk about this every year, this is the problem with Washington,’ Rep. Wesley Hunt said of the yet-to-be-released spending bill. ‘Merry Christmas … We have no idea what we’re voting on.’
Representing an overwhelming Republican district in Texas, Hunt claims his constituents do not support CRs, and therefore neither does he.
He said the CR has ‘all kinds of bloat,’ and that he too will vote against the speaker’s plan.
The CR, in addition to extending current spending levels, is reported to contain over $100 billion in disaster relief in addition to $10 billion for agricultural assistance for farmers.
Many Democrats have pushed for provisions in the CR as Johnson and the GOP majority will need to rely on their votes to get any package through the chamber after Republicans have rebelled against Johnson’s plan.
Already there have been over 10 GOP House members who have said they are against the bill.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who threatened to oust Johnson from power months ago over another CR battle, also slammed the speaker’s plan Tuesday, saying it ‘will result in more Democrats than Republicans voting for it.’
‘But it’s the same old Uniparty BS,’ she added, accusing leadership of ‘dangling important programs around as bargaining chip to fuel more government waste and adding to our deficit.’