The House passed the government funding package for the remainder of this fiscal year Friday, 286-134. Once again, Speaker Mike Johnson had to put the bill on the floor under suspension of the rules, and once again, Democrats had to make up the margin to pass it. And they get to do it all again in six months.
Here’s how tight the margin for Johnson was:
That’s because the Freedom Caucus, as usual, opposed the bill. Before the vote, they held a temper tantrum for the press Friday morning, urging their colleagues to shut the government down instead of passing the funding bill. They called it a “surrender,” and said it “is chock full of crap.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Freedom Caucus reject, yelled on X (formerly Twitter), “Our Republican majority is a complete failure. … I’m voting NO! SHUT IT DOWN!”
In a reflection of just how dysfunctional the House Republican conference is, one of the semi-normal members announced his opposition to the bill because the Senate got to have a say, which is, of course, how the country’s founders set this whole thing up and how legislating works. Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama said he was opposing the package because the Senate had “taken liberties.”
“The Senate must respect the work of the House,” he said in a statement on his congressional website. As if the current House is worthy of respect.
The House is now off on their two-week Easter recess, having finally done their part to fund the government. The rest of the work is now left to the Senate, where lawmakers are still negotiating the time limit for debate on the bill. Republicans have come up with about two dozen amendments they want debated. However, they can’t amend the bill without causing a government shutdown, because the House is already boarding airplanes.
The conservatives, though, seem to be going through the motions on this one. They want to get out of town so much that even Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson just wants to get the vote over with.
“I’m certainly willing to try to convince our conference to agree to time limits so we can get out of here,” he told Punchbowl News. “There’s no reason to let these things go to the very end [and] threaten a shutdown.”
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