GOP revolt leaves House agenda in limbo
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Speaker Mike Johnson in the House Chamber on April 28. Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images
An internal GOP revolt ground the House to a halt Wednesday morning, with the chamber stuck on a procedural vote to begin debate.
Why it matters: House GOP leadership doesn't have the votes to advance any of the major legislation they planned to move this week, leaving the chamber in limbo.
- Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is trying to jam three contentious measures into one pre-recess week: A long-term extension of Section 702 of FISA, the farm bill, and the Senate-passed budget reconciliation package to fund ICE and Border Patrol.
- But a small group of Republicans voted "no" on the procedural rule to begin debate on all three items, and other conservatives are withholding their votes, even after days of negotiations and last-minute concessions.
- Johnson can only afford to lose a handful of votes on party-line measures.
Driving the news: GOP leaders opted to combine all three divisive items into a single rule vote, a strategy that appears to have backfired by uniting opposition around different issues.
- Changes that GOP leaders made to FISA last week have not been enough to sway holdouts, who are still demanding that warrant requirements be attached to the bill.
- House GOP leaders agreed to attach a ban on central banking digital currency to FISA to get hardliners on board, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has called that provision dead on arrival in his chamber, and the Senate is working on its own extension of the spy powers program.
- The program will lapse Thursday night without congressional action.
Leadership's decision to include E15 ethanol provisions in the farm bill has alienated some Republicans, further complicating the whip count.
- The White House is also siding with the Senate on DHS funding, urging the House to cave on the record-long government shutdown and warning the administration is running out of funds to pay employees.
- But House Republicans are unified against ending the shutdown until the Senate passes a reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CBP, delaying action.
The big picture: Rule votes are supposed to be automatic for the majority party, but House Republicans have increasingly used them to punish their own leadership, creating recurring crises for Johnson.
- House Republicans have repeatedly tanked rule votes — the procedural step that opens debate on a bill and has historically broken along party lines — to register opposition to leadership and extract concessions.
What's next: GOP leaders are expected to keep the vote open as long as possible in an effort to flip holdouts — a familiar tactic when leadership is short on votes.
- The longest vote ever held in the House was on a rule vote last year.
The bottom line: The House's inability to move even a procedural vote is fueling frustration within the GOP conference and among Senate Republicans, and raising doubts about whether they can get anything done.
