 Newly-elected US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) walks from his office to the House floor at the US Capitol in Washington, US, October 26, 2023. (REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger) |
Unlike ordinary continuing resolutions, or “CRs,” that fund federal agencies for a specific period, the measure announced by Johnson would fund some parts of the government until January 19 and others until February 2. House Republicans hope to pass the measure on Tuesday. But the plan quickly came under fire from members of both parties.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a release that the proposal was “just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns.”
She said “House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.”
“My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker to the @HouseGOP cannot be overstated,” Representative Chip Roy, a member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, said on the social media platform X.
“It’s a 100% clean. And I 100% oppose,” wrote Roy, who had called for the new measure to include spending cuts.
Democratic Senator Brian Schatz called Johnson’s measure “super convoluted,” adding that “all of this nonsense costs taxpayer money.”
House Republican hardliners have been pushing to cut fiscal 2024 spending below the 1.59 trillion USD level that Biden and Johnson’s predecessor agreed in the May deal that averted default. But even that is a small slice of the overall federal budget, which also includes mandatory outlays for Social Security and Medicare, and topped 6.1 trillion USD in fiscal 2023.
Johnson, who won the speaker’s gavel less than three weeks ago, could put his own political future at risk if his current plan fails to win support for passage and he is forced to go with a standard CR that Democrats can accept.
His predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from the job by eight Republican hardliners early last month, after he moved a bipartisan measure to avert a shutdown on October 1, when fiscal 2024 began. McCarthy opted for the bipartisan route after hardliners blocked a Republican stopgap measure with features intended to appease them.