House Freedom Caucus: Hey, We’ll Take the W on the Schumer Shutdown

The House returns today, after one of its longest functional recesses in modern history, ready to put an end to the Schumer Shutdown. Speaker Mike Johnson sent out the bat-signal nearly two months after passing the clean continuing resolution, after Senate Democrats finally caved to reality on Sunday night and voted to end debate. The upper chamber passed their CR package — with an extension to January 30 — late on Monday evening. 

Johnson has a very thin margin for passage, of course, which the Washington Post notes this morning, but expects it to pass nonetheless:

The bill is expected to narrowly pass in the House with the support of almost all of the chamber’s Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats, though the margins are slim and could be affected by which lawmakers are able to arrive amid travel and weather concerns. President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law.

A majority of House Democrats are expected to vote against the bill, irate that the proposal would not extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Democrats have been pushing to protect before they expire at the end of the year. Since Oct. 1, most Democrats have refused to pass a funding bill until Republican leaders negotiated on health care. Republicans insisted that they would not negotiate until the government was reopened.

The Democratic base and scores of congressional Democrats are livid at the senators who agreed to reopen the government alongside Republicans without an agreed-upon path forward for extending the subsidies. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has pledged to hold a vote on a policy of Democrats’ choosing by mid-December but has not guaranteed that his conference will support it. Johnson has not made the same commitment in the House, fueling anger among House Democrats.

At the moment, Johnson has a 219-213 majority, meaning he can only lose two Republicans in order to pass the Senate package. Thomas Massie is widely expected to oppose it, as he often does in his feud with GOP leadership and Donald Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene might be another vote against passage, given her recent rhetoric, although she has not yet declared her position publicly. 

That leaves Johnson with almost no room for error, assuming he gets no Democrat crossovers, a point to which we’ll return momentarily. Normally, Johnson would expect to have a fight with his Freedom Caucus, a group of fiscal and social conservatives who have been at odds with his leadership. However, as Fox News reported on Monday, those Republicans seem satisfied to get out of the way of the Democrats’ brewing civil war:

The leader of the House’s most conservative group is tentatively giving his blessing to the Senate’s bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told Fox News Digital he was leaning in favor of supporting the legislation, though he added he was still reviewing its final details.

“As it currently is formatted, I would probably be a ‘yes’ vote,” Harris said.

Ralph Norman, another HFC member who occasionally clashes with Johnson, initially opposed the deal but reversed himself on Sunday evening after the five Senate Democrats flipped on cloture. Harris’ only caveat about the “current format” of the bill turned out to be Rand Paul’s proposed amendment about exempting industrial hemp, which failed Monday evening. With that in hand, Johnson appears to have enough margin to pass this on a party-line basis. 

But is that all Johnson has? Time Magazine follows up on the hints in the WaPo article to suggest that some “moderate” Democrats may throw in with the Senate bill:

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said Monday that the Senate plan amounted to “a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the health care of the American people.” The centrist New Democrat Coalition, one of the party’s largest caucuses, announced its opposition the same day, saying the bill “fails to address our constituents’ top priorities, doing nothing to protect their access to health care or lower their costs.” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, called it “a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them.”

Still, a handful of moderates from swing districts have signaled they may back the package. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, who represents a rural Trump-leaning district and recently said he would not seek re-election, is likely to support it after he voted in favor of the House Republican spending plan in September. Moderate Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, both of whom represent politically divided constituencies, have also previously expressed support for the plan. “It’s past time to put country over party and get our government working again for the American people,” Cuellar posted on X on Sunday.

That number may become more than a “handful.” Democrats have a few dozen seats in purple-to-red districts that will find themselves at risk in the midterms, especially with the Democrat lead in the generic poll still below D+5 — if only barely, at D+4.5, a big bounce over the last week after the electoral wins in Virginia and New Jersey. The collapse of the Schumer Shutdown may well burst that little mini-bubble, and extending the shutdown or even participating it after the Senate vote will prove especially toxic in competitive districts. 

Johnson has to muscle this bill through the Rules Committee, where Norman’s support will be critical, then onto the floor. At the moment, the estimate for passage is sometime this evening. Stay tuned, and take advantage of our VIP discount code on the Schumer Shutdown while you can. It works for upgrades, too. 

Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points. They own this.

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