Speaker Johnson is facing a major test of his leadership as he tries to hold the unstable coalition that is the Former Republican Party (FRP) together sufficiently to fund the government for FY 2024, which began on October 1, 2023. Note that the Constitution’s Origination Clause states that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House, and the House has customarily generated the initial versions of the appropriations bills.
The current Continuing Resolution expires next Friday, November 17, 2023. The House is currently not in session and is not scheduled to resume until Monday, November 13, 2023. For Speaker Johnson to avert a partial government shutdown, he must get a new continuing resolution passed or must eventually get through the following steps :
get the fractious FRP factions to get Committee approval for all of the House versions of the appropriations bills so they can go to the floor
get the fractious FRP factions to pass House versions of the appropriations bills that fund the government
reconcile those bills with their Senate versions through the House/Senate conference committees.
get the reconciled bills passed by both Houses with straight up or down votes. Only identical versions of the bills can be passed by both Houses before they can be sent to the President
see the reconciled bills signed and not vetoed by President Biden.
over-ride a Biden veto, which requires a 2/3 affirmative vote in both chambers of the House. or start the process over again.
The Congressional Records Service (CRS) serves as nonpartisan shared staff for members of Congress and congressional committees. It provides an appropriations status table as a snapshot of where appropriations legislation stands in the pipeline.1 The headline numbers are:
The House has passed 7 of 12 Appropriations bills: Defense, Energy-Water, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Legislative Branch, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, and State-Foreign Operations.
The Senate has passed 3 of 12: Agriculture, Military Construction-Verterans Affairs, and Transportation-HUD.
No identical bills have been passed by both chambers, following reconciliation in the House/Senate Conference Committee if needed
No bills have reached The President’s desk for review and signature
No bills have been signed into law by the President.
No bills have been vetoed by the President and returned to Congress
Even with prayer and God firmly on his side, this is not a to-do list that can be accomplished by November 17, when the current continuing resolution (CR) that cost Kevin McCarthy his Speakership expires. So the choice comes down to another (CR), or an extended shutdown while a battle rages within the FRP to even get bills out of committee.
What progress was made yesterday in the House on appropriations? according to the Clerk of the House: 2 The House brought up the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill and considered an amendment to cut the salary of President Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to $1, an amendment to prevent funding of a regulation to disclose greenhouse gas emissions, an amendment to probit funding to require regulation of non-bank financial institutions, another to prevent funding for the Small Business Administration to create any new small business loan programs. Marjorie Taylor Greene notified the House of her intent to offer a privileged resolution for the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.3
And just to underline the degree of dysfunction in the FRP, the House version of the Agriculture Appropriations Bill that made it out of Committee failed on the floor vote 191 yeas to 237 nays with 27 Republicans voting against their own bill and 3 not voting. Seems like there were pretty severe issues whipping the bill.
Who were the Republican defectors? Quite a number of members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, others are tied to biofuels, and most hopefully, there are quite a number of freshman Republicans on the list, along with several Republican women who are supportive of Women’s issues. Note that the Agriculture Appropriations bill would have cut WIC and SNAP benefits to 6 million people. 4
Bacon (Whip of bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
Chavez-DeRemer (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
Ciscomani (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
D’Esposito (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
De La Cruz (Vice Chair bipartisan Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues) freshman
Feenstra (Member Congressional Biofuels Caucus)
Finstad (Main Street Caucus, Republican Study Committee)
Fischbach (Member Congressional Biofuels CaucusCaucus, Republican Study Committee , Co-Chair of Pro-Life Caucus)
Fitzpatrick (Co-Chair of bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
Garbarino (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
Hinson (Member bipartisan Pre-K and Child Care Caucus)
Kean (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
Kiggans (Member Republican Main Street Caucus) freshman
Kim (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
LaLota (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
Lawler (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus) freshman
Lucas (Member of Agriculture Committee)
Mace (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
Mann (Member bipartisan FFA Caucus (Future Farmers of America))
Miller (OH) (Member House Agriculture Committee) freshman
Miller-Meeks (Member bipartisan Biofuels Caucus)
Molinaro (Member House Agriculture Committee) freshman
Moolenaar (Co-Chair of Congressional Chemistry Caucus)
Newhouse (Chair of Congressional Western Caucus and Co-Chair of 5 caucuses related to agriculture and food)
Nunn(IA) freshman
Valadao (Member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus)
Van Orden (Member House Agriculture Committee) freshman
What can we conclude from this?
The Chaos caucus is being allowed to play to the base with time-wasting amendments to appropriations bills like cutting Jean-Pierre’s pay and impeaching Mayorkas. They are obstructing the business of legislation and are being given free rein by Speaker Johnson and the leadership.
If another CR is not passed, the partial government shutdown will drag on for a long time. I haven’t looked at the details of the bills that the Republicans have passed, but given the amendments being proposed to the Financial Services bill, it is going to take a long time to get the House/Senate Conference Committees to come up with identical bills that will pass both chambers.
The FRP still has a few members who are willing to go against the conference and not toe the party line (the defectors on the Agriculture Bill), but they may be voting because of pressure from special interest groups, or they may believe that the bill is not in the best interests of the constituents or because they think it will help them get re-elected. Several of them are freshmen—so there may be hope that they will continue to be interested in bipartisanship. But then again, they could just be naive and primaried or told they will not have access to campaign funds from the party.
Tighten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Thank you, Georgia. The FRP is definitely a danger to democracy, particularly the chaos faction. We cannot allow this dysfunctional group to destroy America. There are 410 days until January 3, 2025 when a new House of Representatives is sworn in. I hope we have at least 230 Democratic Congress persons by then. Constitutionally the chaos faction cannot reduce the salaries of Vice President Harris or Press Secretary Jean-Pierre, that much is firmly entrenched in Article 6, Section 1, and Amendment 14, Section 4. However they can raise enough havoc with the rest of their insane rants.
The legislation regarding Debt Limit originated around the end of the First World War and for most of its life since then it has been a harmless bookkeeping mechanism. In more recent decades it has been weaponized by the Republican Party. The only time it becomes an issue is when there is a Democratic President and a Republican-controlled Congress. IMPORTANT POINT: Passing the debt limit DOES NOT create new debt. It gives the federal government "permission" to pay debts previously created by Congress. The debt limit legislation has no Constitutional force. Quite the contrary, the Constitution's 14th Amendment states "The validity of the public debt of the United States,..., shall not be questioned.", so there is a strong case that debt limit legislation, particularly when used as a political weapon as the Republicans have done, is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Ex-President Clinton told the Obama administration he would use the 14th Amendment "without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me". I would suggest that President Biden be urged to make a public address explaining the "IMPORTANT POINT", addressing the Republican abuse of the debt limit legislation, and then declaring his intention to follow the path advised by Ex-President Clinton. The text of the 14th Amendment within the ellipse above is: "including debts occurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion". Is this "including" phrase to be interpreted as merely an emphasis for these items that were of particular interest at the time of passing the amendment, or does it carry an implication of exclusion for items not explicitly mentioned? It would be interesting if a reader with expertise in Constitutional law would address this question.