Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) takes part in a ceremonial swearing-in for a new member, at the U.S. Capitol, November 13, 2023.
From a pragmatic standpoint, it was always baffling that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and other right-wing extremists threw out Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the Speakership when he cut a budget deal with Democrats. After all, Democrats control the Senate and the presidency, which means their support is required to enact any budget bill. That means compromise is necessary—and it’s more necessary given that the House GOP caucus contains a number of loopy extremists who constantly shoot down even their own party’s messaging bills. Hence, Republicans required Democratic help to pass the debt ceiling deal in May, and the continuing resolution deal in September. The latter deal inspired Gaetz to call for a vote to remove McCarthy.
Now, after several false starts the Republican far right has one of their own in the Speaker’s chair: Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), a relative newcomer whose bizarre porn monitoring habits, extremely suspicious financial disclosures (he supposedly does not have a bank account), and central involvement in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election have gotten wide attention. With McCarthy’s last budget compromise set to expire and the government set to shut down on Friday, right before the Thanksgiving holiday week, Johnson is facing the exact same dilemma his predecessor did.
And sure enough, he is handling it in the exact same way: by cutting a deal with Democrats to kick the can down the road for a couple of months. The difference this time is that the funding bill will be split in two. The first one includes money for the VA, military construction, energy, agriculture, and water; it will expire on January 19. The second will have everything else, and it will expire on February 3. This split is supposed to be a sop to the Freedom Caucus as it will prevent the House GOP from being bigfooted by the Senate with a unified funding bill.
Democrats don’t like the bill itself, but since it contains no funding cuts, they’ll reportedly take it. The Freedom Caucus is not happy; most members are reportedly set to vote against the bill. But per Axios, they have also granted Johnson a “hall pass” this time, meaning they won’t vote to kick him out if the bill goes through with Democratic support.
If all goes well, two months from now we get to do this all over again, and once more in the month following.
On one level, we see once again how profoundly dysfunctional the Republican Party has become and remains. After throwing out their own Speaker—the first time that had happened in over a century—for dealing with the elementary political facts facing the party, and enduring weeks of humiliating media coverage as they fumbled around trying to agree on a successor, they are right back where they started. They’re like some party composed entirely of toddlers trying to repeal bedtime by voting to halt the passage of time, with a faction that won’t agree unless they also get a unicorn.
But on another level, we also see how broken the basic structure of American government has become. Electing a legislative leader and passing a budget are about the most basic possible tasks of government—as I have written, in parliamentary systems they are largely a formality following an election and negotiations within the majority coalition. Here we get to have high-stakes negotiations every couple of months about whether or not the government will continue to keep the lights on.
At any rate, assuming this deal actually goes through, the question now is how the GOP extreme right is going to handle this going forward. On one hand, the fact that Johnson got his hall pass tends to suggest a grudging acceptance that some accommodation with Democrats simply can’t be avoided. The chaos around McCarthy’s removal and replacement made the House GOP look like incompetent imbeciles, and should the government be shut down, they would likely be blamed for it (not least because it would be entirely their fault). And by January, we will be much closer to the April deadline, created by the debt ceiling deal, when big cuts to military spending would take effect absent a proper appropriation.
On the other hand, as Kate Riga writes at Talking Points Memo, by early next year whatever honeymoon period Johnson has had with the extreme right may be over. All it takes is one irresponsible loudmouth itching for more media attention to trigger a vote to remove him, and several Freedom Caucus members are already signaling that next time they’ll want more confrontation and cuts. Besides, such stubborn lunacy has worked out well for Gaetz—despite being loathed by much of the House GOP caucus, his profile has never been higher. Right-wing media rewards that type of behavior.
Will the American republic be able to stagger through to the 2024 election largely intact? We’ll get part of the answer in January.
