House GOP leadership scrapped plans for a Wednesday vote on the party’s stopgap funding plan, as its chances of passage sank in recent days amid opposition from defense hawks, hardline conservatives and moderates.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had vowed all week to press forward with a vote on his funding plan — which pairs a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with a bill backed by former President Trump that would require proof of citizenship to vote — even as it became clear he did not have the votes to pass it.
But just hours before a planned vote on the measure, leaders pulled it from the floor.
“The whip is going to do the hard work and build consensus. We’re going to work through the weekend on that,” Johnson told reporters.
Johnson later clarified: “No vote today, because we’re in the consensus-building business here in Congress with small majorities.”
The decision to pull the vote on the CR and Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act bill marks a 180 for Johnson, who just 24 hours earlier promised to bring the legislation to the floor despite the mounting opposition.
Asked about the implications of the legislation failing on the floor, Johnson had told The Hill on Tuesday morning, “Sometimes you have to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may.”
The move by Johnson catapults House GOP leadership back to square one, now needing to craft a conservative stopgap that could pass the House and, in turn, increase the party’s leverage in negotiations with Senate Democrats.
If the CR-plus-SAVE Act was any indication, however, the path forward will be tricky.
While the measure was pushed by members of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, fiscal hawks within the group and outside it said they were opposed to any form of stopgap in general.
Defense hawks worried about the impact of not increasing funding for the Pentagon. Still others saw the bill as a meaningless exercise, as it would have been dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Some moderates were also weary of the strategy, as worries rose about having a shutdown threat so close to Election Day.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear that he would not bring up the measure for a vote, and the White House said President Biden would have vetoed it.
Democrats have been pushing for a shorter funding extension and note that noncitizen voting is already illegal, worrying about the proposed additional voter registration hurdles harming eligible voters.
The path to avoiding a government shutdown is further complicated by Trump publicly insisting that the House address voting concerns before agreeing to extend government funding.
Johnson kept focus on the voting issue when announcing the pulled vote.
“And I want any member of Congress, in either party, to explain to the American people why we should not ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections,” Johnson said.
Updated at 12:13 p.m. EDT