Speaker Johnson Floats Plan To Avoid a Holiday Government Shutdown Crisis

House Speaker Mike Johnson told Senate Republicans on Wednesday that he's open to a temporary funding bill to keep the government open into the new year.

Republicans who attended a weekly lunch meeting, at which Johnson was the featured guest, said the newly minted speaker floated a plan during their private luncheon to avoid a shutdown later this month as the House and Senate continue work on the 12 annual spending bills.

The Senate, which held a vote later Wednesday to pass a package of three spending bills, is catching up to the House, which has passed five freestanding spending bills, far behind schedule because of the chamber's dysfunctional speaker drama.

“They want to pass all their approps bills. He thinks he can get that done by early” next year, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said of Johnson’s tentative strategy.

Multiple senators who left the meeting said Johnson suggested a second short-term spending patch last through Jan. 15. The current temporary funding bill — approved on a bipartisan basis, which eventually led to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster — runs out Nov. 17. 

There was also talk of “a 1% reduction in the CR,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said, using the acronym for a measure known as a continuing resolution that maintains current levels of funding, “because he wants to start finding ways to reduce spending.”

That aligns with Johnson’s public comments on the matter. Johnson said Sunday on Fox News that if a funding extension is needed to buy more time he would prefer one that extends through the holidays into the new year.

“I would favor, for purposes of discussion to build consensus around, if there indeed has to be a stopgap funding measure that we would do that until January 15,” he said. “And the reason for that is it gets us beyond the end-of-the-year push. And oftentimes the Senate tries to jam the House and force an omnibus spending bill. We’re not doing that here anymore.”

Johnson said “there may be some conditions put on” the funding extension, like making a 1% across-the-board spending cut that would occur if Congress does not pass the annual spending bills effective Jan. 15 instead of in April, as set by the debt limit law.

Democrats have already shunned the idea of conditions for keeping the government open.

“We have never given in to any Republican extreme ransom demand in the context of a potential government shutdown. We never will,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York told reporters last week. “It’s a futile effort. And it’s just designed to hurt the American people and extract pain.”

Stephen Neukam contributed to this report.