House passes GOP spending bill as Democrats shrug off 'goofy' laddered structure
House Speaker Mike Johnson had to rely on Democrats to fund the government through at least Jan. 19, though some found his methods a little bizarre
The House voted 336-95 on Tuesday to fund the government through at least Jan. 19, though new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had to rely on Democrats to send his spending bill to the Senate. Johnson, unable to get enough Republican votes to pass the legislation under normal rules, needed a two-thirds majority, or 288 votes. All but two Democrats voted for the stopgap bill; 93 Republicans voted against it.
The Senate is expected to pass the continuing resolution before the government shuts down at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
When Johnson unveiled his bill on Saturday, it wasn't clear Democrats would back it. The White House called his "laddered" approach — it funds 20% of the government through Jan. 19 and the other 80% through Feb. 2 — "unserious" and "a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns." Once Democrats read the bill and saw it contained no spending cuts or right-wing policy riders, they came around to see it as the best option available to avoid a pre-Thanksgiving shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday he was "heartened — cautiously so" — that Johnson omitted "any terrible hard-right cuts," even as he called the laddered approach "goofy." Other Democrats called it "gimmicky."
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Johnson's predecessor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was ousted by a handful of hardline Republicans after passing a similar stopgap bill by relying on Democratic votes. But hard-right conservatives, while voting against the package, seemed open to cutting Johnson a little slack. Johnson, meanwhile, argued that his laddered approach was "an important innovation" that ends the practice of passing "a massive omnibus spending bill right before Christmas," a conservative bugaboo.
And after a day in which one GOP senator tried to fist-fight a Teamster boss, a Republican committee chairman yelled that a Democratic colleague looked "like a Smurf," and another House Republican accused McCarthy of sucker-punching him in the hallway, as USA Today recapped, Johnson said averting a government shutdown "will allow everybody to go home for a couple of days for Thanksgiving" and "cool off. Members have been here for 10 weeks."
"We're living in a world of crazy," Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told Politico, explaining his tepid support for Johnson's bill. "At some point, you have to cut weird deals with arsonists. And that's where we are."
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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