House speaker risks government shutdown for racist bill

The House is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a stopgap funding bill to prevent a government shutdown on Sept. 30. This bill is apparently identical to the one that House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled from the floor one week ago after it was obvious he lacked the Republican votes to get it passed.

On orders from the always noxious Donald Trump , Johnson tied the continuing resolution to the toxic SAVE Act. That legislation, which is based on a racist conspiracy theory that undocumented people are casting fraudulent ballots, is designed to make it more difficult for people to vote by demanding proof of citizenship from anyone registering. Republicans are counting on this difficulty to filter out voters more likely to support Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The presence of the SAVE Act language in the continuing resolution means that Johnson can expect next to zero Democratic support. However, Johnson’s problem up to this point has been inside his own party . Splinter factions of the GOP have declared this version of the SAVE Act not strong enough, claimed that the stopgap bill doesn’t provide enough defense funding, or announced that they oppose short-term funding bills on principle.

It’s not clear that Johnson has made any deals that will get the bill through this time when it failed before. There still seems to be plenty of grumbling in the House from some of the same players that doomed the bill’s passage one week ago. And with only four Republican votes to spare (assuming all GOP House members are present, rather than off campaigning ), each dissident becomes a big deal.

x This is classic bait and switch that will enrage the base, only one month before the election, when they find out they have been tricked and let down again. The only way to make the SAVE Act a law would be to refuse to pass a CR until the Senate agrees to pass the SAVE Act and..

. https://t.co/XAGq59ycvT — Rep.

Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 17, 2024 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made it clear that he’s fed up with Johnson’s inability to manage the narrow Republican House majority. With a shutdown looming in less than two weeks, Schumer needs at least one of those weeks to walk the spending bill through the Senate. And since the SAVE Act language will not survive a Senate vote, more time is going to be required to work out a deal between the two chambers .

.. if a deal can be reached.

With Trump pushing his minions to reject a bill that doesn’t include the racist language about noncitizen voting, it’s far from a sure thing that Republicans won’t just let the government shut down and then try to blame Democrats. But for that to look even partially plausible, Johnson needs to at least get the bill out of the House. Schumer isn’t the only senator who is running out of patience.

Several Senate Republicans are also tired of Johnson’s ineffectiveness . Those Republicans include some of Trump’s biggest supporters on that end of the Capitol who recognize that a shutdown one month before the election won’t necessarily be seen as a great thing, no matter how the GOP tries to spin it. “I don’t like a shutdown, period,” Sen.

James Lankford of Oklahoma told reporters on Tuesday. “Whether close to an election or not, it wastes money. It costs taxpayers more money.

They don’t save, they lose. If we’re protecting taxpayer resources, which is supposedly part of our job, we have to find a way to not have a shutdown.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has made it clear that Democrats are willing to support legislation to avert a shutdown, but not so long as that spending bill includes efforts to suppress voters.

If Johnson can get the bill passed on Wednesday, then it will go to the Senate with toxic language that dooms it to failure in that chamber. If Johnson can’t get it passed, the speaker may find that his only choice is to strip out the SAVE Act and turn to Democrats for their votes. Meanwhile, the countdown to a shutdown keeps ticking away.

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