Johnson has 3 main options to avert a shutdown. None of them are looking good.
Mike Johnson’s in a terrible spot, with a government shutdown deadline looming in less than 48 hours and no obvious way out.
Conservatives are furious, rank-and-file members are exasperated, and President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to primary his members and taking blatant shots at his speakership.
After spending weeks negotiating a stopgap spending bill with several add-ons, Trump and others all but killed Johnson’s deal on Wednesday. Now, he has to figure out if he’ll try to stick with it, passing it using a lot of Democratic support, or come up with another last-minute escape hatch. And time is quickly running out.
All of his options have downsides. Let’s lay them out:
Stick to the status quo: This appears to be the least likely, as both Donald Trump and Elon Musk have come out against the bill he negotiated to punt the funding deadline until March 14.
This might have passed both chambers — at least, it could have before Trump came out against it — but if Johnson moves forward with it now, there’s a good chance he won’t be reelected speaker on Jan. 3. Conservative anger is too high, with at least one Republican already saying he’ll vote for someone else and several others noncommittal.
Plus, Johnson needs Trump to stay on his side. Directly opposing him by putting this forward anyway would be ill-advised, and Trump hinted at this in an interview with Fox News Digital, saying Johnson would "easily remain speaker" if he "acts decisively and tough" and eliminates "all of the traps being set by Democrats" in the spending package.
A clean stopgap bill: Even before Trump came out against the stopgap funding package Wednesday, Johnson was discussing putting forward a “clean” bill that wouldn’t include add-ons like disaster aid and a farm bill extension. But there are problems there, too, and it’s unclear that it could clear Congress.
Some Republicans have vociferously demanded disaster aid for their natural disaster ravaged communities. Sen Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), for example, already said he wouldn’t vote for a package unless it included disaster aid. Democrats also likely wouldn’t support the bill unless it at least included money to help those affected by natural disasters.
Plus, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance have now called for a debt limit increase to ride along with this bill. Leaving that out could stoke their anger, even if it’s a more straightforward bill.
Stopgap with a debt limit hike: This is the preferred option of Trump and others — but it requires rank-and-file to walk what has been the third rail of modern GOP politics: Lifting the nation’s borrowing limits. Republicans have twisted themselves into all sorts of pretzels to avoid precisely these sorts of votes over the last decade, preferring to leave it to Democrats.
Typically, raising the debt limit comes with spending caps, an issue that takes weeks of negotiations, if not more. Lawmakers have less than two days before a shutdown kicks in.
Maybe Trump’s insistence gets enough Republicans on board — but lawmakers would then have to likely pass the underlying bill on their own. Democrats have indicated they don’t plan to bail out Republicans over these sorts of 11th hour demands for changes to their negotiated bipartisan measure.
Keep in mind: This is all before the measure reaches the Democratic-run Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to eventually pass the legislation to keep the government lights on. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he's waiting to see what the House does.
As we said: There are no good or consequence-free options for Johnson. This episode has riled up some conservatives against his speakership — and the odds of him easily clinching the gavel have gone down substantially.