Hardline Republicans TANK vote to progress Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending plan after Democrats helped him pass bill to punt government funding deadline to after the new year
House Republicans failed to advance a spending bill a day after Speaker Mike Johnson scored a victory with an emergency funding plan to avert a government shutdown.
The rule to advance the Trade, Justice and Science Appropriations Act and Iran sanctions legislation failed after 19 Republicans voted against it. The group consisted mainly of hardline Republicans, along with four moderates from New York.
The rule failed by a vote of 198 to 225, preventing the House from considering the measures.
The House now heads home for an extended Thanksgiving break.
“This place is like a pressure cooker,” Johnson said Wednesday, before former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., got into a possible physical altercation. Oversight Chairman James Comer mentioned Florida Democrat Jared Moskowitz. , a “smurf,” and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said Rep. Darrell Issa has no balls and called him a “p***y.”
After Johnson bought himself a few extra months to get through the appropriations process, Wednesday’s inability to approve the line to begin debate on a single spending bill could spell trouble for that process.
House Republicans have failed to advance a spending bill a day after Speaker Mike Johnson swept to victory with an emergency funding plan to avert a government shutdown
This is the fourth line vote to fail since the start of the 118th Congress in January, showing just how liberal this Republican conference is. Before this year, a rule vote had failed only eight times in the past two decades.
In previous terms of Congress, the party in power was usually responsible for passing the rule. Members of the majority party often vote for the rule even if they oppose the final bill.
Conservative Republicans were upset that they didn’t get votes on their amendments — as well as the continuing resolution, CR, which passed Tuesday and will fund the government at fiscal year 2023 levels throughout the new year — without the cuts they have demanded .
The CR passed with more Democratic votes than Republicans, but gives Congress more time for each chamber to pass appropriations bills and then negotiate them together.
Members of the Freedom Caucus said they opposed the CJS appropriations bill because it did not include provisions to expropriate FBI headquarters and/or what they called an “unconstitutional” gun registry, citing a new ATF database.
“We’re done with the theater of failure here,” said Scott Perry, chairman of the Freedom Caucus. “This bill is very, very weak.”
Yet conservative hardliners have not criticized Johnson personally and have given him space since he has been in office for three weeks.
Instead, they blamed the appropriators in the House of Representatives, who write spending bills. “The appropriators are holding this process hostage,” Perry said.
“We want to support our speaker and bring about the change that needs to be made on behalf of the American people,” said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va.
Of Johnson, Luna said, “We like him a lot. He’s a nice guy, but we’ll make sure he does what you said he was going to do.”
“Speaker Johnson has broad support at the conference,” Good said. “He is admired for his integrity.”
The question is how long that good will for the new speaker will last.
“That’s based on performance,” Good told DailyMail.com. ‘We expect him to keep his word that he will not do another CR. We expect him to keep his word that we will pass our remaining five spending bills, that he will put tough negotiators on the conference committees with the Senate, that he will fight for the best possible outcome, that we will turn the situation around. process next year.
“Our support for him depends on that.”
No one is talking about filing a motion to vacate, like when McCarthy put a CR on the House floor.
“That’s a ridiculous question, he’s been on the job for 20 days,” Perry said of the possibility.
Conservatives were also angry that the bill would consider an Iran bill under closed administration. That bill would have imposed sanctions on any foreign entity that facilitates the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian assets currently held in a bank in Qatar.
The group consisted mainly of members of the Freedom Caucus, along with four moderates from New York
“Today they tried to pass a closed rule on Iran, which, even though it was a bill that targeted the $6 billion, paled in comparison to the amendments we have that would have actually controlled Iran in the way that it controlled should be. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters.
He called for changes to end the Biden administration’s authority to waive sanctions on entities doing business with Iran and to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
“What the hell is going on?” said Roy. Israel is under attack. And yesterday we finance Hamas through the CR with dollars that go to the United Nations through UNRWA, that is unacceptable.”