Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is promising that the House will not approve a single, massive bill to fund the entire government in December — a scenario feared by conservatives — despite a stopgap that’s expected to clear the House this week expiring on Dec. 20.
“There won’t be a Christmas omnibus,” Johnson said in a press conference on Tuesday, reiterating a message he relayed privately to members in a House GOP conference meeting that morning.
It is a bold promise from the Speaker, who has struggled to corral the slim House GOP majority behind an effective strategy to pressure the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House on spending.
And it would also defy historical precedent. Congress has regularly passed omnibus spending bills after a funding deadline butts up against end-of-year holidays, when members are eager to quickly finish legislative business and return to their families.
Conservatives have aimed to avoid that scenario, fearing Democrats and a lame-duck President Biden would load the bill with their own priorities. They had pushed for a stopgap spending bill that extended funding through March 2025, but it failed on the House floor.
The House is expected to vote on Wednesday on a continuing resolution (CR) to extend government funding until Dec. 20 in order to avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1. While many conservatives opposed to any kind of stopgap are expected to vote against the bill, it is likely to pass due to support from Democrats.
Johnson pointed to a move last year that extended government funding to two separate dates past December last year as evidence that he could avoid an omnibus this year. The House eventually approved government funding in two separate large packages, but only after multiple stopgaps to buy lawmakers time.
“We have broken the Christmas omni, and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said.
Johnson is also ruling out other large packages of funding legislation, such as “minibusses” — bills that combine funding for some, but not all, areas of government. Government funding is theoretically divided up among 12 appropriations bills.
“We don’t want any busses. We’re not going to do any busses, okay?” Johnson said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) pushed a similar message, and painted this week’s stopgap bill as a win because it did not include other funding that Senate Democrats wanted.
“This is always a tough negotiation. The Senate wanted to try to spend more money, and our Speaker stood up to the Senate and said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’” Scalise said. “They wanted to play this Christmas Eve Omni game that they used to play, having an omnibus drop on Christmas Eve, and nobody’s read the bill, and it just gets voted on, everybody leaves town. We said no to that last year, and Mike Johnson, as Speaker, is saying no to that again this year.”
Johnson noted that the House has passed five of the 12 regular funding bills — which were packed with GOP priorities and considered dead on arrival in the Senate — while the Senate has passed none, pointing the finger at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
“I’m going to hope, I’m going to plead, I’m going to urge the Senate to do their job. As the Leader Scalise noted, they have not done that. This is Chuck Schumer’s fault,” Johnson said.
There is also a pressure point that did not exist last year: It is the end of the 118th Congress, with the potential that the balance of power flips in January.
Regardless of the outcome of the election, Johnson in December will face a Democratic-controlled Senate and White House while having a slim and fractious GOP majority, a dynamic that has dogged numerous funding fights over the last 21 months.
In fact, the three-month CR coming for a vote this week is Johnson’s plan B to avert an Oct. 1 shutdown.
Johnson’s first “play call” in the government funding fight was to pair a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with a measure to require proof of citizenship to register to vote — dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act — which was pushed by former President Trump.
The package was never expected to become law because of opposition from Senate Democrats and the White House, but it was intended to be an opening salvo in negotiations.
Johnson never got the chance to make that opening offer because it could not pass through the slim House GOP majority. Fourteen Republicans, consisting mostly of fiscal hawks who balk at any kind of continuing resolution, voted against the bill.
