Speaker Johnson Sets Up Doomed Vote on Funding Bill

Johnson Sets Up Doomed Vote on Funding Bill

House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday that he plans to go ahead with a floor vote on a continuing resolution that would fund the government for the first six months of the new fiscal year, which starts on October 1. The vote on the CR — which is paired with the SAVE Act, a controversial piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to vote — is now scheduled for Wednesday, a week after a previously scheduled vote that Johnson canceled amid concerns that the package would fail.

Johnson spent the last week trying to build support for the bill, but a handful of Republicans and virtually all Democrats continue to express opposition to the package, raising significant doubts about whether it can pass.

“We'll see what happens. I really hope we can do it,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday. “I'm not having any alternative conversations. That's the play, it's an important one, and I'm going to work around the clock to get it passed.”

Some Republicans in the House made it clear that their minds are already made up. “Speaker Johnson is fake fighting by attaching a bright shiny object (that he will later abandon) to a bill that continues our path of destructive spending,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, said on social media. “I’m a hell no.”

Even if the speaker can find a way to muscle the bill through the House, it will go nowhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Johnson said Tuesday afternoon that he was also considering adding new funding for the Secret Service to the package, although he seemed skeptical of that option, saying he didn’t want to “just throw more money at a broken system.”

Eying the alternatives: With Johnson refusing to discuss how he might proceed if the CR fails, there is growing concern that lawmakers could stumble into a government shutdown in two weeks. Democrats and some Republicans are pushing for a three-month CR that jettisons the SAVE Act, and that approach could end up being the last-minute alternative that prevents a shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Johnson’s plan is “unworkable” and called on him to abandon it. “At this point in the process, the only way we can prevent a harmful government shutdown is by both sides working together to reach a bipartisan agreement,” Schumer said.

‘Beyond stupid’: Republicans in the Senate also expressed concerns. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky warned against allowing funding to lapse. “The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown,” he told reporters. “It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election because, certainly, we'd get the blame.”

McConnell added that he is “for whatever avoids a government shutdown, and that’ll ultimately end up, obviously, being a discussion between the Democratic leader and the speaker of the House as to how to process avoiding government shutdown.”

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said the whole process is “becoming a mess,” while Senate Minority Whip John Thune suggested that the upper chamber may have to take the reins from the House soon. “If they don’t get something by the end of the week,” he told reporters, “the game changes.”

Trump Pledges to Restore SALT Write-Off

Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that he would restore the full tax write-off for state and local taxes, a deduction that was limited to $10,000 in the tax package he signed into law during his time in the White House.

“I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” Trump said on his social media network, without providing much by way of details.

The comment comes a day before Trump is scheduled to hold a rally on Long Island, in the suburbs of New York City, one of the high-tax areas whose residents have pushed for a restoration of the full value of the SALT deduction.

Trump’s critics were happy to point out that he is responsible for the SALT limit in the first place. “Trump was the one who took away SALT,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “It hurt many New Yorkers, including lots on Long Island. Now that he’s going back to Long Island for the first time, he changes his mind? Give me a break.”

Fiscal hawks were quick to remind everyone just how costly a repeal of the SALT limit would be. “Removing the SALT cap would increase the cost of TCJA extension by $1.2 trillion,” said Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, referring to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that introduced the cap in 2017.

Vice President Kamala Harris gave an interview today to three reporters at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, where she said she had called former President Donald Trump and “checked on him to see if he was ok” after the latest would-be assassination attempt against him. The White House called the conversation cordial and brief.

Harris also condemned the “hateful rhetoric” and baseless claims about Haitian migrants in Ohio, that Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have been repeating. "I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” she said, not mentioning Trump by name.

More work to do: Asked whether voters are better off now than they were four years ago, Harris responded by first reminding people about the challenging conditions the Biden-Harris administration inherited, much of which she attributed to former President Donald Trump. She listed off “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression”; “the worst public health epidemic in centuries”; and said they took office “after the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” (The labor market claim is exaggerated, since the unemployment rate had fallen to 6.4% by January 2021 after peaking at 14.8% in April 2020.)

“We had then a lot of work to do to clean up a mess,” Harris said.

The vice president then ran through a list of administration accomplishments. She touted the 16 million jobs added, a historic low in the Black unemployment rate, strong growth in small business formation, the new $35 cap on the monthly cost of insulin for seniors, a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket prescription costs and the first Medicare drug price negotiations.

“These are just some of the accomplishments,” she said. “Is the price of groceries still too high? Yes. Do we have more work to do? Yes.”

Harris then discussed her plans for an “opportunity economy,” including incentives to build new housing to address the national shortage. Asked about making childcare more affordable she said it is sad that people often have to decide between working and providing care because the existing options are so expensive.

“My plan is that no working family should pay more than 7% of their income on childcare, because I know that when we talk about the return on that investment, allowing people to work, allowing people to pursue their dreams in terms of how they want to work, where they want to work, benefits us all. It strengthens the entire economy.” Harris also promoted her plan to expand the Child Tax Credit to provide up to $6,000 for parents with newborns.

Fiscal News Roundup

• House to Vote Wednesday on Doomed GOP Government Funding Bill – Washington Post
• Johnson ‘Looking at’ Potential New Secret Service Funds in Short-Term Spending Bill – Politico
• Senate Republicans Losing Patience With Johnson as Shutdown Nears – The Hill
• McConnell: Government Shutdown Before Election ‘Politically Beyond Stupid’ – The Hill
• Trump Indicates He Would Lift Cap on Costly State and Local Tax Deduction – Politico
• Congress Mulls New Secret Service Funding After Apparent Attempt on Trump's Life – NBC News
• Vance Blames Democrats for Threats Against Trump, Criticizes Media’s Springfield Coverage – Washington Post
• Harris Condemns Trump’s Rhetoric, Says Voters Should Make Sure He ‘Can’t Have That Microphone Again’ – Associated Press
• Secret Service Tells Trump Changes Are Needed for Him to Golf Safely – New York Times
• Senate GOP Blocks IVF Bill Again as Democrats Spotlight Issue Ahead of Elections – CNN
• Fed Prepares to Lower Rates, With Size of First Cut in Doubt – Wall Street Journal
• US Retail Sales Ticked up Last Month in Sign of Ongoing Consumer Resilience – Associated Press
• $50 Billion in Aid to Ukraine Stalls Over Legal Questions – New York Times
• Washington and Seoul Discussing New Deal on Cost Sharing for US Troops – CNN
• A $5 Billion NASA Mission Looked Doomed. Could Engineers Save It? – New York Times
• GLP-1 Pills Are Coming, and They Could Revolutionize Weight-Loss Treatment – CNN

Views and Analysis

• Johnson’s Gantlet on Government Funding – Eli Okun, Politico
• Federal Debt Is Soaring. Here’s Why Trump and Harris Aren’t Talking About It – Richard Rubin, Wall Street Journal
• How Inflation Fooled Almost Everybody – John Cassidy, New Yorker
• Vance: Trump’s Health-Care Plan Is to Let Insurers Charge More for Preexisting Conditions – Jonathan Chait, New York
• The Struggle Over Obamacare Might Be Ending. Obamacare Won – Washington Post Editorial Board
• Trump’s Establishment Enablers – Robert Kuttner, American Prospect
• Make Social Security the Model to Fix the Minimum Wage – Kathryn Anne Edwards, Bloomberg
• How Trump Is Undermining the Economy in Some Struggling Cities – Paul Krugman, New York Times
• Kamala Harris Just Got One of Her Best Polls of the Year – Harry Enten, CNN
• I’ve Studied the Polls. Here’s Why Harris Isn’t Running Away With It – Kristen Soltis Anderson, New York Times
• 5 Takeaways From Harris’s Interview With NABJ – Cheyanne M. Daniels, Brett Samuels and Alex Gangitano, The Hill