Johnson Embarks on Ambitious Legislative Week, Hoping Conservatives Won’t Again Gum Up House’s Work

Speaker Mike Johnson is embarking on what may be the most ambitious legislative week of his political life, trying to pass four critical bills before sending his colleagues home for a six-week summer recess. The most important challenge will come on Tuesday when he tries to pass a procedural measure that will open up the House floor for the next three days. Mr. Johnson — arguably the most unlikely speaker in modern American history — has been trying to rally his Republican colleagues around a legislative agenda for the last several months as Republicans head into what could be a difficult midterm election. The House was left in gridlock for three weeks earlier this summer after a small band of House conservatives refused to vote to open the floor for debate and votes over a bevy of concerns around election reforms, border security, and spending issues. Now, Mr. Johnson is laying all of his cards on the table in the hopes that the same group of hardliners won’t muck up the president’s agenda. On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson will hold a vote on what is known as a “rule” in the House. A rule vote is simply a procedural vote to open the House floor for debates and votes, though because he never allows Democrats’ amendments to come up under his rules, Democrats never vote for that procedural measure. With only a three-vote majority in the House, Mr. Johnson has no room for error in adopting the rule on Tuesday. The rule that is currently laid before the House will allow lawmakers to consider four important pieces of legislation — the annual defense authorization bill, a congressional stock trading ban, a government funding bill which would allow Congress to stay out of session until after the midterms, and a budget resolution to begin the process of sending additional funds to the Department of Defense outside of the traditional appropriations process. If the rule fails on Tuesday, then the House is almost certain to go home early for its summer recess. Some conservatives, however, say they are on board with the speaker’s plan. “I think the rule will pass pretty easily,” the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Andy Harris, told Politico on Monday. Two lawmakers — Congressmen Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson — have expressed reservations, however. Mr. Massie has real concerns about a new U.S.–Israel joint defense technology cooperation initiative which would be established by the new defense authorization bill. “We should not merge our military tech & supply chain with Israel’s. I will vote AGAINST the RULE that allows the NDAA to come to the floor and AGAINST the NDAA,” Mr. Massie wrote of the National Defense Authorization Act. Mr. Davidson, meanwhile, has real concerns about the budget reconciliation resolution which would cost as much as $95 billion without any spending cuts to offset those costs. “Every dollar Congress borrows fuels inflation, erodes Americans’ purchasing power, and saddles future generations with more debt. The federal government wastes hundreds of billions of dollars every year through fraud, improper payments, duplication, and failed programs,” Mr. Davidson said in a statement Monday. “Congress should cut waste before asking taxpayers — or our children — to foot the bill.”

Johnson Embarks on Ambitious Legislative Week, Hoping Conservatives Won’t Again Gum Up House’s Work

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