House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is facing a potential floor revolt Wednesday that could derail three major GOP priorities and bring the House to a standstill.
The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure on Tuesday to tee up floor consideration of three separate bills: an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the farm bill, and a party-line budget resolution to fund parts of the Department of Homeland Security.
But while Johnson was able to successfully get the procedural measure passed out of committee, he now must wrangle his entire conference to support bringing the bills to the floor.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) described the current state of affairs in the House as a “s***show,” before correcting himself to call it a “crap show.”
To win over the holdouts, GOP leadership made a two-part deal with different GOP factions. For privacy hawks threatening to hold up a three-year extension of FISA, leadership agreed to include a ban within the spy powers package on central digital bank currency. To appease rural Republicans on the fence about the farm bill, Republicans agreed to allow the year-round sale of a gasoline ethanol blend known as E15.
Yet, the deal-making has by no means assured the procedural measure will pass.
Already, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has declared she is a “no.” Meanwhile, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) also signaled she could oppose bringing the bills to the House floor. Both Mace and Boebert had amendments to the bills blocked by the rules panel.
“Republicans on the committee unanimously voted against them and they will not even be considered for a floor vote,” Boebert wrote in a post on X. “Farmers and ranchers in my district are counting on me to be their voice in DC and our ‘leadership’ is not letting me do my job. I am a NO on the Rule.”
Mace claimed that the committee would not give her office an answer as to “which of our non-controversial amendments to help hard-working South Carolinians will be ruled ‘in order.’”
“Why would I vote for the Rule?” Mace questioned.
The procedural measure passed by the Rules Committee packages all three pieces of legislation together. That means lawmakers will only have to vote once to bring all three bills to the floor.
That strategy is not favored by everyone in the House, with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) calling it a “mistake” to put them all under the same legislative vehicle and calling on them to be separated.
If the procedural motion fails, however, the lower chamber will grind to a halt, and Johnson will be forced to go back to the drawing board for all three pieces of legislation.
JOHNSON BREAKS GOP IMPASSE ON SPY TOOL, FARM BILL, AND BUDGET BILL
Working in Johnson’s favor, the Office of Management and Budget reportedly sent out a memo Tuesday urging Congress to pass the Senate’s funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security as well as the budget resolution passed out of the House Rules Committee as part of the package.
If the measures are not passed, OMB warned that the Trump administration will be unable to continue paying DHS personnel starting in May amid the partial government shutdown.