House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) back is against the wall. He's got more than a dozen members of the Republican caucus sharpening their knives to kill his speakership if he does what's necessary to keep the government going and get a deal on border security.
That deal on the border would come with funding for the Ukraine war, while a vote on a short-term funding bill to stave off a government shutdown will probably occur before the week is out. Neither Ukraine funding nor another Continuing Resolution is supported by the rebels of the Freedom Caucus. Recognizing that, Johnson has surrendered and will not bring the border security bill that's in the final stages of negotiation to the House floor.
Instead, he will demand that the Senate adopt H.R. 2, the Republican border bill the GOP passed last spring. That bill is so strict that even many Republican senators oppose it.
In a call with members of the GOP caucus, Johnson made it clear that there would be no border deal that didn't adopt H.R. 2 completely. That's exactly the position of the rest of House Republicans. It means there won't be a border deal or Ukraine funding, or funding for the border, or funding for Taiwan's defense.
It also means there probably won't be a lot of Republican votes on the Continuing Resolution that's become necessary because the 11 funding bills needed to fund the government through September 30 haven't been passed yet.
On a Republican conference call Sunday night, Johnson told lawmakers they would have more leverage by not shutting down the government and by working instead to get their priorities included in the 12 appropriations bills that fully fund the government, according to two people on the call. On immigration, he reiterated that H.R. 2 is his position, but he was careful not to reveal specifics of what the House would accept if a Senate immigration deal came together, the sources said.
It’s a familiar set of challenges that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., faced before a group of eight rabble-rousers banded together to overthrow him in October after he refused to shut down the government.
How badly do Biden and the Senate Democrats want to fund Ukraine's war? How badly do they want to keep the government going past this coming Friday?
“Nobody wants to end up back where we vacate the speakership and go through the contest for who’s going to be the next speaker that we trust,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the Budget Committee chair. “Because it’s a small margin, it’s a divided Congress, and it was a deal that was made before we got here. Those are realities that we have to keep in perspective.”
I guess Republicans have given up trying to legislate anything. They like the fact that the border is out of control. The Senate bill is not perfect, but the huge concessions Biden has made will alter asylum and border policies more than Trump could have accomplished.
H.R. 2 will never pass the Senate. While an out-of-control border situation would benefit Republicans at the ballot box, it can't do anything but harm the United States. Republicans should eschew the easy political solution and accept a good border deal now.
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