House tanks Speaker Johnson’s back-up government funding plan

Democrats and Republicans on Thursday tanked House Speaker Mike Johnson’s second attempt at a short-term government funding patch, adding more uncertainty as to whether Congress will avoid a partial government shutdown.

The bill failed 174 to 235, with 38 Republicans joining nearly every House Democrat to kill the bill.

Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, is expected to try and bring the bill to the floor again ahead of the midnight Friday deadline to fund the government. 

He and a cross-section of the House Republican conference hammered out the new proposal after backlash from within the party and a deathblow from President-elect Donald Trump, who demanded a version of the bill that nixed Democratic priorities and either extended, or outright terminated, the debt-ceiling. 

Indeed, the latest iteration was a trimmed down version of the original package that extended finding still included some of the same spending items, like $100 billion in disaster aid for those affected by hurricanes Helene and Milton and $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers. 

One of the bigger changes, which earned the ire of debt hawks and fiscal conservatives, was a two-year extension of the suspension of the debt ceiling, as requested by Mr. Trump. 

Mr. Johnson said ahead of the vote that the bill was still the same bipartisan measure, save for the debt-ceiling extension, that was hashed out with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.

“Everything that I just told you was negotiated in a bipartisan fashion,” he said. “Both parties agreed to these terms, and that’s what’s on the floor right now.” 

However, neither House Democrats nor Mr. Schumer werenot involved in the hours of negotiations behind closed doors in Mr. Johnson’s office throughout Wednesday night and into Thursday afternoon.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, pinned a possible shutdown on the GOP. 

Democrats argued throughout the day that Mr. Johnson had turned his back on their deal, and had been strong-armed by Mr. Trump and tech-billionaire Elon Musk, who lambasted the original funding patch on X. 

“It is an expression of very poor leadership skills on the part of the Republican majority in the House, and Hakeem Jeffries basically doesn’t know who his negotiating partner is,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat. “Is it Mike Johnson? Is it President Elon Musk or Vice President J.D. Vance or junior Vice President Donald Trump.”