Speaker Johnson blames Senate Dems for government funding fight

House Speaker Mike Johnson is going full speed ahead with his likely doomed government funding patch and is blaming the Democrat-led Senate for its necessity.

The House on Wednesday will vote on the six-month funding plan that pairs a continuing resolution with legislation that requires proof of citizenship to vote. A half-dozen Republicans and nearly all Democrats are poised to vote against the measure and set the speaker back to square one.

Despite that opposition, Mr. Johnson was confident the bill would hit the floor even after pulling it from consideration a week earlier and believed some lawmakers who promised to vote “no” would have a change of heart. But Congress will have just a week of working days left in Washington to prevent a partial government shutdown by the funding deadline on Oct. 1.

Part of the reason Mr. Johnson is so determined to put the bill up for a vote is because of former President Donald Trump, who demanded last week that Republicans get assurances on election security with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or shut the government down.

Mr. Johnson was coy on whether he agreed that the government should shutter. He argued that the only reason he and Congress were in this position was because while the House passed five spending bills, the Democrat-led Senate has not put even one up for a vote.

“The process bogged down; you know why? Because Chuck Schumer and the Senate have not put one approps bill on the floor,” he said.

“So it is the Senate that has put us in a situation to have to have a CR, to not shut the government down, to not discontinue all government services,” Mr. Johnson continued.

Senate appropriators are waiting to see how the vote in the House plays out, and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate’s spending panel, wanted to move immediately on a plan.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer wants a bipartisan effort that goes until December, the typical time frame for a short-term funding patch.

Republicans haven’t presented a backup plan.

While the speaker didn’t touch on what other options could be available, like a clean continuing resolution with no policy attachments and a short time frame, or a six-month stopgap without the SAVE Act, he did promise that if Republicans control the government next year, the spending process would go much smoother.

“I’ll commit this to you, in the first part of next year, when we have unified government, when the Republicans are delivered the levers of power, and we have the White House, the Senate and the House again, we’re going to govern responsibly,” he said. “We are going to do 12 separate appropriations bills. We’re going to follow the timeline that is prescribed by the statutes in the days and years ahead.”