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Spending Deal Debacle Threatens Johnson’s Tenuous Hold on His Job
A Republican backlash to the speaker’s plan to temporarily fund the government has sparked new talk of ousting him, and highlighted the challenges he will face if he manages to keep his job.
Reporting from the Capitol
Speaker Mike Johnson spent months doing everything he could to hang on to his job come January, most notably a concerted charm offensive to keep President-elect Donald J. Trump placated and in his corner. It took just a few hours on Wednesday for it to all go bad.
The Louisiana Republican this week got a taste of what life could be like in the second Trump era beginning next month as he was mercilessly undercut on his complex year-end legislation by Mr. Trump and the president-elect’s exceedingly influential ally Elon Musk — that is, if Mr. Johnson is the speaker at all.
“We’ll see,” Mr. Trump told NBC News on Thursday when asked about his confidence in Mr. Johnson.
The speaker’s fate was thrust into question after House Republicans exploded in anger over the fully ornamented legislative Christmas tree he rolled out to fund the government into March, a 1,500-plus-page grab bag of year-end priorities and policy changes.
House Republicans, who have spent the weeks since the election talking about how they are going to remake the government in concert with Mr. Musk and cut all sorts of agencies and spending programs, were suddenly confronted with a bipartisan big-ticket measure that looked a lot like business as usual.
Mr. Trump demanded that Mr. Johnson jettison the deal he had cut with Democrats to keep the government open and, for good measure, raise the federal debt ceiling before Mr. Trump takes office. The speaker spent Thursday contorting himself to try to fulfill those demands, and by late afternoon had hatched a plan to do so, though it was unclear whether he would be able to push it through the House.
Either way, Mr. Johnson’s standing has sustained a major hit.
One House Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he would not support Mr. Johnson for speaker after he cut the initial spending deal. Several others also said the proposal put Mr. Johnson’s job on the line.
“Everything has consequences,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “No one puts forward this bill the way it was done.”
Steve Bannon, the right-wing provocateur and former senior Trump adviser who helped to fuel the right-wing revolt that felled Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, and who still has Mr. Trump’s ear, was much more blunt about Mr. Johnson.
“He’s got to go,” he said on his streaming show “War Room.” “President Trump supports him until he doesn’t support him.”
Given the very narrow majority Republicans will hold when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3, Mr. Johnson can afford very few defections if he wants to hang on to the speaker’s gavel, which he got only because of Mr. McCarthy’s ouster.
Mr. Johnson, who was the fallback choice for speaker by Republicans who couldn’t coalesce around anyone else to lead them, did not rise through the leadership ranks, where lawmakers traditionally hone their skills at things like quelling party divisions when a major issue, such as avoiding a shutdown, is in play. On Thursday, he was cloistered in his office in the Capitol, listening to ideas from his colleagues on how to extricate himself and his party from the spending difficulties.
Keeping his job has clearly been a priority for months as Mr. Johnson has tried to shore up support. He has been a regular visitor to Mar-a-Lago to consult with Mr. Trump and to pledge his allegiance to his most important constituent, the incoming president.
The two are not a natural fit. Mr. Johnson is a bookish, deeply religious man. He looked somewhat out of place tagging along with the Trump retinue to Ultimate Fighting Championship Fight Night at Madison Square Garden last month. But he has seen his stability tied to Mr. Trump.
The speaker also took steps to neutralize some of his harshest critics on Capitol Hill. He agreed to install Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who led a failed move to oust Mr. Johnson in May, as the chair of a new subcommittee to work with Mr. Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on their effort to make huge cuts in government spending.
But the plum assignment might not have been enough to satisfy Ms. Greene, who on Thursday on social media opened the door to backing Mr. Musk for speaker, since the person holding that office does not need to be a member of the House.
Another piece of Mr. Johnson’s strategy to protect himself has exacerbated his current predicament. With the funding deadline of Dec. 20 arriving so close to the Jan. 3 start of the new Congress and the speaker election, Mr. Johnson pledged that he would not present Republicans with a huge year-end package of multiple spending bills known as an omnibus. Conservatives have griped for years that those bills don’t get the scrutiny they deserve and lead to higher federal spending.
Instead, Mr. Johnson settled on a plan to extend government funding into March, when Republicans will be in full control of Congress and the White House, theoretically giving them the ability to determine spending levels without having to make concessions to Democrats. But because of an assortment of unfinished business, the measure took on a lot of baggage in the form of $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 billion in direct payments to farmers and, perhaps most toxically, a slight pay raise for lawmakers.
Mr. Johnson sought to defend the legislation as beneficial to Mr. Trump because it would get rid of some of nagging issues that the new administration wouldn’t have to waste time on.
“By doing this, we are clearing the decks, and we are setting up for Trump to come in roaring back with the America First agenda,” Mr. Johnson said on the program “Fox and Friends.” “That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning Jan. 3 when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again are in control.”
But his colleagues were outraged by the resulting legislation, which they considered a giveaway. And while it might not have met the technical definition of an omnibus, which is a collection of spending bills, it was just as outrageous to some of them and put Mr. Johnson on shaky ground.
A central problem for Mr. Johnson is that while Republican members of the House control his fate, many of them refuse to support any spending bills, forcing the speaker to turn to Democrats for help in keeping the government funded. And when he bargains with Democrats, he gets legislation like the measure that imploded on Wednesday under Republican fire.
The situation will not get any easier — nor Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk more tolerant — when Mr. Trump officially returns to power in January, when Republicans will have an even smaller majority than they do now. Even if Mr. Johnson survives this episode in this Congress, he will still be at constant risk in the next one.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital. More about Carl Hulse
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