"What's the point?": Johnson won't bring House back during shutdown
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Speaker Mike Johnson talks with reporters in the hallway outside his Capitol Hill office following a news conference on Oct. 28. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) shut down the idea of bringing his chamber back before the Senate acts on a government funding bill, telling reporters Wednesday it would be a "futile exercise."
Why it matters: The House hasn't voted since Sept. 19, when they passed a clean continuing resolution through Nov. 21. Johnson signaled he's willing to blow through that November deadline and leave it to the Senate to come up with a new bill.
- "If I brought the House back, and we passed another CR, it would meet the exact same fate with Chuck Schumer. He would mock it, they would spike it, and they would try to blame it on us. So what's the point?" Johnson said Wednesday at his daily press conference.
- Last week, Johnson told Axios that they're taking it "day-by-day," in terms of determining the new date for a CR.
- "It was calculated to allow enough time to finish the job," Johnson said of the Nov. 21 deadline last week. "It is going to be more and more difficult with each passing hour to get all the appropriations done on time."
Johnson's argument over the last five weeks for keeping lawmakers out was that the House "had done its job" — which won't hold up past Nov. 21.
The big picture: The Senate failed for the 14th time this week to pass the House's CR, and there's no indication that either side is caving yet.
- Even if the chamber passed that bill today, it would only give them three weeks before the next funding cliff, likely not enough time to pass full-year appropriations bills.
- Eventually, it won't make sense for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to keep forcing the chamber to vote on the House-passed CR as the date gets closer to Nov. 21.
The intrigue: Johnson was frustrated Wednesday that reporters had been focused more on the House's month-plus indefinite recess rather than the shutdown itself.
- "You guys are writing more about the House calendar than the real pain that's being inflicted on the American people," he said.
- A handful of GOP lawmakers have started to express skepticism about Johnson's strategy, with frustration about keeping lawmakers out of DC boiling over on a private call Tuesday afternoon.
- Democrats, and some Republicans, have argued that the House could use this time during the shutdown to pass a full-year appropriations bill, rather than be at home in their districts.
The bottom line: "It doesn't matter what we do in the House. It doesn't matter what we pass." Johnson said, closing his press conference for the day.
