Johnson in 'colossal mess' with 'no plan' to avert shutdown amid rising anger: reports

19 December 2024

Speaker Mike Johnson and his Republican majority in the House reportedly have “no plan” to avert a shutdown of the federal government—a shutdown that will begin at 12:01 AM Saturday unless they can draft and pass replacement legislation, convince the Senate to pass it, and get President Joe Biden to sign it into law—all in about 36 hours.

“It’s a colossal mess,” NBC News’ Sahil Kapur reported Thursday morning (video below). “This bill looked all set to pass the House and the Senate over the coming days. It had broad bipartisan support after it was inked by Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and leadership in both parties.”

Up until Wednesday morning, there had been little worry about a shutdown this week, until billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, now being decried as an “unelected oligarch” by U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), kicked off a twelve-hour 100+ tweet storm that included “a number of misleading or outright false claims,” as Politico reported. The bill, a continuing resolution, or “CR,” included funding to keep the government open, and critical money for farmers and areas hit hard by hurricanes.

“There is no plan right now. There’s no bill,” Kapur added, “that can get the support of the House of Representatives and the Senate and get signed into law by President Biden.”

Not only is Speaker Johnson on the ropes for not having a “plan B,” but according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, Johnson’s own Republican conference and even his leadership team are angry that he did not move to get the bill to the floor for a vote before it blew up in the late afternoon.

“In my conversations with many republicans [sic] this morning,” Sherman wrote, “there’s a lot of anger that Johnson didn’t hold a vote yesterday before Trump spoke. They say they could’ve passed this bill and put it behind them. Would’ve been messy. May have screwed Johnson personally – why the speakers team thinks it wasn’t tenable – but in Johnson’s leadership, there’s some anger about this move.”

Musk on Wednesday had fueled outrage on the right over the CR that would have funded the federal government through the middle of March, by promoting “false and misleading statements,” according to Politico, that alleged the bill included a 40% salary bump for members of Congress, $3 billion to pay for a football stadium in D.C., would fund “bioweapons labs,” and block the House from investigating the Democratic-led House January 6 Committee.

Meanwhile, Kapur reported we are in “uncharted waters at this point, having a deal blown up so quickly, so close to the deadline on something of this magnitude.”

But Donald Trump has a history of doing exactly what he and Elon Musk, the co-chair of Trump’s nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, did Wednesday.

“Maybe people have short memories, but Trump blindsiding the congressional GOP by waiting to weigh in on (and trash) legislative deals until after they’ve been mostly negotiated was literally his m.o. for the entire first term. On tax. On the shutdown CR. On NDAA. On everything,” remarked Matt Glassman of The Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University on Wednesday evening.

Kapur added that the President-elect “seems to be recognizing the legislative traffic jam that’s headed his way, even if they do get this [bill to keep the government open] done, they still have to come back in March and deal with Democrats—Trump and his Republican leadership has to deal with Democrats to get the government funded again. There is still a 60 vote threshold for that.”

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans on Wednesday once the bill was dead.

“House Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” he told reporters. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt everyday Americans.”

Watch the videos below or at this link.

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