Johnson Plan Fails… What’s Next?

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is in a real pinch right now.

His Plan B was pushed back against Trump, the new plan, which Trump supported, failed to garner the support of the full GOP caucus, and now a government shutdown looms over the weekend.

The Last Second

Before I get into the meat of all this, let’s talk for a second about how long Congress has had to figure this out, and yet again, they wait until the last second.

This is unneeded drama, and if our political officials spent less time on social media, traveling around the globe, and writing books, maybe some work could actually get done.

Yet, here we are, on the verge of the shutdown deadline, and we still don’t have legislation sitting in front of members of Congress to digest before they vote on it.

So, as usual, they are going to get a monster piece of legislation with no time to actually study what they are voting for. But hey, it is no big deal; it is only about $1 trillion of our tax dollars at stake.

Rejected

The first bill that fell apart was the bill that Republicans had negotiated with Democrats, but it was packed with earmarks and protections for Democrats, so support for the bill fell apart, especially after Trump rejected the bill.

Johnson scrambled to put another package together that included key elements Trump wanted to see, including a two-year extension of the debt ceiling, but that was not sitting well with dozens of Republicans in the House.

When Johnson put that bill on the floor on Thursday, it also failed, which resulted in Trump and his surrogates threatening to primary everyone who did not support the bill.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who is now being referred to by Trump and his supporters as a RINO, stated, “It’s a water-downed version of the same crappy bill people were mad about yesterday.”

What Next

As Friday morning arrived, Johnson was working overtime to try to get everyone in the caucus on the same page.

He stated, "There is a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward. I will not telegraph to you the specific details of that yet, because I've got a couple of things I got to wrap up in a few moments upstairs, but I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations."

First and foremost, they are going to have to limit the extension of the debt ceiling. Second, they are actually going to have to show how they can pay for the bill, which is unlikely considering how short of a time they have to put it together.

Finally, before it gets passed, they are going to have to present an actual plan to cut spending, or people like Roy are not going to sign off on it. Speaking of Roy, he is taking considerable heat, but his obligation is to his constituents, not Donald Trump, and he also happens to be right here. We are all willing to give Trump some leeway, but that bill that was presented last night was a complete and utter joke that looked like it was tossed together in 15 minutes, and it probably was.