For House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), the easy part is over.
The untested GOP leader stormed into the top ranks of power last fall and spent the first three months negotiating a series of spending bargains with President Biden, all without suffering the same political blowback as his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who was booted from the Speakership for cutting very similar deals.
But steeper challenges await in the coming weeks, when Congress confronts a pair of must-meet deadlines on long-term government spending, and Johnson will potentially face a crucial decision on how — or whether — to move more Ukraine aid through the lower chamber against the wishes of former President Trump and conservatives in Johnson’s own conference.
In the meantime, the House next week is expected to take up a bipartisan tax package that’s quickly incensed Johnson’s right flank, both for its substance and because of the fast-track process by which GOP leaders want to bring it to the floor.
The combined agenda has created a hazardous terrain for the new Speaker. He was given early space to operate with impunity but will have to navigate gingerly through the looming legislative minefield amid new threats that a misstep could find him following McCarthy out the door.
Even some leadership allies are quick to acknowledge that Johnson is in no easy spot.
“He was thrown into the deepest end of the pool with the heaviest weights around his neck and told to learn to swim. It’s been a pretty brutal process, and it’s tough, and this is the second toughest piece of the calendar to negotiate,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who served as interim Speaker between McCarthy’s ouster and Johnson’s swearing in, told reporters in the Capitol.
“He’s not been around these decisions, so he’s had to learn a lot and try to feel his way through.”
FILE – Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., gives a statement to reporters, Jan. 12, 2024, at the Capitol in Washington. Approaching his first 100 days on the job, Johnson faces daunting choices ahead: He can try to corral conservatives, who are pushing hard-right policies, to work together as a team, or he can keep reaching out to Democrats for a bipartisan coalition to pass legislation. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
In the early stages, Johnson has been a quick study. Since taking the gavel in late October, he’s championed two short-term spending bills, known as continuing resolutions (CRs), to prevent a government shutdown. And this month, he secured a third bipartisan deal on topline numbers to govern 2024 spending through the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on Oct. 1.
Johnson’s bipartisan deal-making has won him accolades from Democrats, who have welcomed his willingness to reach across the aisle and forge agreements to keep the government running.
“I think he understands [that] to govern you’ve got to be able to get outside the comfort zone and compromise,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas). “And I gotta give it to him, I think he’s trying to do that.”
But the cooperative gestures have also infuriated conservatives, particularly those in the far-right Freedom Caucus, who had accused McCarthy of frittering away the powers of the House majority, and are now lobbing the same critiques at Johnson.
“People voted for Republicans to be in the majority, not to count on Democrats to pass bad legislation that Republicans shouldn’t be bringing to the floor,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), former head of the Freedom Caucus, said of the tax deal.
The tax legislation, which combines cuts for businesses with benefits for low-income families, passed out of the Ways and Means Committee with a resounding 40 to 3 vote. But the exclusion of a controversial credit for state and local taxes, known as SALT, has infuriated moderate Republicans in wealthier states, while conservatives are trashing the deal for providing child tax credits to families of undocumented immigrants.
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Some GOP lawmakers even attacked their own party for being too generous to corporations.
“I’m sick of these gutless cowards in Washington,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Fox radio host Jimmy Failla on Thursday.
“You know what we’re gonna put on the floor next week?” he continued. “A tax cut bill for corporations, because Republicans are whores for endless wars and corporations. That’s it. That’s what they stand for … I’m not gonna pretend that it’s something else.”
GOP leaders are expected to bring the tax bill to the floor using a procedural gambit known as the suspension calendar, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. That strategy avoids the need to vote on a preceding rule, which critics of the tax deal might choose to block, but it’s antagonized conservatives by stealing their powers to amend.
“Major legislation,” Perry said, “should go to the Rules Committee.”
Of the coming legislative battles, only government funding is must-pass. Congress united earlier this month to adopt a CR that extends government funding, at 2023 levels, through March 1 for some agencies, and through March 8 for the rest.
Weeks earlier, Johnson had endorsed a bipartisan topline deal to govern the transition into higher, 2024 spending levels. But the tougher task is in portioning out those funds among the various agencies — a task appropriators have yet to finalize — and then enacting them into law.
Conservatives, already up in arms that Johnson endorsed topline numbers they deem too high, are also demanding that any final long-term spending bills include a host of policy riders on radioactive issues like abortion, immigration and “wokeness” in government — all nonstarters with Democrats.
The debate is sure to squeeze Johnson and his leadership team between a desire to prevent a government shutdown, by forging deals with Democrats, and their efforts to appease the conservatives demanding policy wins in return for keeping the government open.
“How’s he going to handle the will of all of his members who want terrible things to be added?” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wondered before the recess. “So I don’t think we’re out of the woods for a shutdown. I don’t have any real confidence. And if he were to agree without any riders, will they get rid of him? Could be. I don’t know how beloved he is.”
For all the pitfalls of the government spending fight, the battle over Ukraine assistance might pose the greatest threat to Johnson’s gavel.
While Republicans had overwhelmingly supported billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv in the wake of Russia’s invasion two years ago, the party’s appetite for continuing that largess has waned dramatically.
A test vote on $300 million in Ukraine aid failed to win support from half the GOP conference last September. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is vowing to file the motion to oust Johnson if he brings Ukraine funding to the floor. And Trump, the runaway favorite for the GOP presidential nomination, is amplifying his “America First” platform by opposing a nascent deal in the Senate combining Ukraine aid with domestic border security.
Johnson appears to be listening.
After a meeting with Biden at the White House earlier in the month, the Speaker said House Republicans would oppose any Ukraine bill that lacked strict new limits on southern migration. And on Friday he sent a letter to the members of his conference reassuring them that a Senate deal, if one emerges, would have a short lifespan in the lower chamber.
“If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true,” Johnson wrote, “it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”
Emily Brooks contributed reporting.