Speaker Mike Johnson Unveils Plan to Avoid a Government Shutdown Transcript

Julie Tsirkin, I want to bring you back into the conversation here quickly. I asked, you are delivering. What are you hearing?

And just forgive me, I’m looking down at my phone because I’m getting texts from members in real time. This call is ongoing and just a few moments ago, speaker Johnson unveiled his plan. It would be that two-tiered CR, continuing resolution that we’ve been reporting all day now. What it does is it funds the government in two separate parts, rather than the whole government, as we’ve often seen even with short-term extensions of government funding deadlines. The first deadline would come on January 19th for a bunch of bills, agencies like water, transportation, like military contracts, all kinds of agencies that are required, of course, to have funding to keep the lights on.

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The second tranche would be funded until February 2nd. So we have two different debt dates. Democrats were concerned about this because it’s very logistically complicated, but this is also a plan endorsed and backed by some of the most conservative Republican members. Notably though, Yasmin, real quickly here, this is by all accounts, a clean, quote unquote, CR. That’s because it doesn’t have any budget cuts, any spending cuts. It also doesn’t have any aid for Israel. I am told in part that’s because Johnson, who kind of boxed himself into a corner here said that he still wants those offsets, those payfors for any emergency aid, including to Israel, something that he definitely supports. So, details here, just in the last couple of minutes, I’m told bill text will drop at the end of this call. We’ll certainly look out for that.

Talk to me about timing here.

So if this bill comes out today, which we assume it will, since he just talked about it, a vote could happen as soon as Tuesday. That’s because members need 72 hours to read legislation per house rules that were adopted earlier this year. If it passes, which is a big if. Certainly Johnson is operating with a very, very slim and fragile majority, then that puts Democrats in the Senate in an interesting spot.

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Again, this doesn’t have any budget cuts, something that they will certainly approve of, but this is not the approach that any even grownup appropriators over there, even Republicans on that side want to take just because of the complexity of it, putting more showdowns in the future for potential funding cliffs, multiple times rather than just one. If it doesn’t pass, the Senate already began work on their own clean continuing resolution with just one funding deadline, I’m told likely going into mid-January. So we’ll see how this shakes out here over the next coming days.

Who is likely to object to this on the Republican side? Do we know?

Well, that’s a good question. This is endorsed by House Freedom Caucus members. That means moderates are actually the ones to watch here. A different situation, sort of the reverse that we saw a month and a half ago with Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, who was of course ousted for passing a clean CR without any spending cuts and relying on democratic votes to do it.

All right, Julie Tsirkin for us. Thank you, Julie. Appreciate it.