House Dems issue warning to speaker: 'We’re not going to continually save Mike Johnson'

01 May 2024

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) owes his likely survival of an attempt by fringe elements of his party to oust him to his Democratic rivals. But House Democratic leaders are warning that the speaker shouldn't get used to it.

Beltway news site NOTUS reported that Democrats are wary of being the speaker's life raft to escape Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Georgia) upcoming motion to vacate. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said that even though her party is planning to bail Johnson out during next week's expected vote on the motion, Johnson will be on his own if his opponents try again. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) is reportedly cautioning the speaker to not hope for Democrats to be his unflinching allies if Greene and her allies resurrect the motion.

“[Jeffries] has been very clear that this is a narrow, very narrow, onetime deal,” Jayapal said of Jeffries. “We’re not going to continually save Mike Johnson.”

Johnson has been on thin ice since holding a vote on a $95 billion foreign aid package in April — including roughly $60 billion to help Ukraine — which President Joe Biden quickly signed into law after it passed the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Greene has said multiple times that she would bring a motion to vacate to the floor of the House if Johnson approved more Ukraine aid, and has enlisted the support of Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Arizona) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) in her campaign to oust the speaker.

However, supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia has remained a top priority for Democrats in Congress, and many have already said they would reward Johnson with a vote to table Greene's motion — effectively killing it — if he acquiesced to their requests for a vote on the foreign aid legislation. And some Democrats have suggested that they don't want to allow Greene's motion to succeed, as it would give the far-right Georgia Republican even more power and influence.

"We want to turn the page. We don’t want to turn the clock back and let Marjorie Taylor Greene dictate the schedule and the calendar of what’s ahead," House Democratic Caucus chair Pete Aguilar (D-California) said on Tuesday.

According to NOTUS, Democrats also view their limited collaboration with Johnson as the most meaningful way to exert their own power as a minority, in order to both win future concessions on legislative votes and to stave off more conservative policies that Johnson may be pressured to pass.

"Being able for us to work our minority position as deftly as possible to help defang some of the worst prospects of a Republican majority has been part of our work this term," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said. "But you know, things are still gonna be bad around here until Democrats take the majority in the House, and that’s just the fact of the matter."

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida) agreed, telling the publication that his caucus' deal with Johnson is "less of us getting our priorities met and more of us being able to water down the horrible things they want to get through."

Greene is likely to bring her motion to vacate up sometime next week. She hasn't said whether she would re-introduce it if it does indeed fail.

Click here to read NOTUS' full report.

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