House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for trust as the House GOP is divided on how to exactly avoid a government shutdown.
Republicans have a little more than a week to address the issue, raising questions over whether or not the conference will be able to rally behind its new speaker. Lawmakers emerging from a House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday said that there were a number of different proposals that were under consideration.
Republicans Discuss How To Avoid Government Shutdown
Several of these appear to be non-starters with the Senate but House Republicans are not yet coalescing around any proposal ahead of the Nov. 17 deadline. One proposal is a two-step "ladder" continuing resolution (CR) that would provide funding for part of the government until Dec. 7 and the rest until January.
This aims to encourage the passage of regular appropriation bills while another idea is to pass a simpler stopgap until January that includes conservative policies and stipulations. Some lawmakers have proposed longer timelines, including a two-step approach until January or February, to avoid a deadline that is coming just before the holidays, as per The Hill.
In a statement, Rep. Dusty Johnson said that there continues to be a pretty wide range of views about what they should do regarding the situation. Republican lawmakers have signaled that the new House speaker will get more leeway on a stopgap than Kevin McCarthy. The latter was ousted in part over objections to how he handled the funding of the federal government.
Rep. Eli Crane said that speaker Johnson has not yet had months to figure everything out but believes that he has an appetite for leadership to think outside of the box and be unconventional. However, the divisions within the conference also suggest that the speaker could have trouble unifying 217 Republicans around one proposal.
Nonetheless, Johnson projected optimism on Tuesday by saying that the GOP conference had a "refreshing, constructive family conversation" in the morning meeting about different options to avoid a government shutdown.
Mike Johnson Calls for Trust
Rep Brian Babin said that everyone had a little bit of a different position and opinion on the matter at hand. Johnson added that it is a dangerous time around the world, adding that they would be revealing their plan soon, according to Yahoo News.
Republican lawmakers have said that they fear being forced to back a rival funding measure from the Democratic-led Senate. They also noted that they expect Johnson to unveil a stopgap measure within the next few days that would ensure a House vote early next week.
Johnson told the public to "trust us" as he pitched a staggered Republican approach to fund the government. However, this proposal has little chance of success in the Senate and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer admonished the speaker and the GOP for fiscal brinkmanship.
If federal appropriations lapse on Nov. 18 without proper action, it would affect a wide array of federal services and the government's more than 3 million civilian and military employees. The imminent funding deadline also joins a to-do list on Capitol Hill. This includes emergency aid to Israel and Ukraine, said the Washington Post.
