What’s up, Dispatchers?
You’ve got your congressional reporter here writing your politics roundup this week, so I thought I’d give you a fun update on the latest antics on Capitol Hill. The focus all of Tuesday was House Republicans’ budget resolution, which the chamber was slated to vote on that evening. The question was whether or not it would have enough support in an unruly GOP majority from which Speaker Mike Johnson could afford to lose no more than one vote.
Johnson had to convince both moderate Republicans from swing districts, who were wary of potential cuts to Medicaid that would follow, and fiscal hawks, who are always demanding more in spending cuts. By Tuesday morning, it seemed that the moderates were satisfied, but there were still some holdouts among the hardliners. Reps. Victoria Spartz, Tim Burchett, Warren Davidson, and Thomas Massie had publicly threatened to vote against the resolution. With a vote slated for a little after 6 p.m., uncertainty reigned. “There might be a vote tonight, there might not be,” Johnson said at a Tuesday morning press conference.
The speaker spent the rest of the day meeting with holdouts, trying to convince them to vote for the budget. When the time came, things did not look good. Leadership had scheduled three votes in succession, with the resolution being the second in the series. The House will often keep the first vote in a series open for a little while to allow members time to get from their offices to the floor, but leadership pushed the limit last night. It held the first vote open for over an hour while Johnson and others tried to do some last-minute vote whipping. It looked as though they failed, as Republicans pulled the resolution from the series and sent members home for the day.
And then … sike! Just a few minutes later, Republicans put the vote on again and called members back. Johnson was successful in pushing through the resolution by a vote of 217-215 with Massie being the lone Republican to vote against it.
Now comes the hard part: deciding exactly what to put in a final bill that gets a majority in the House. Johnson passed a big test last night. Will he pass the bigger ones to come? Follow The Dispatch as we find out.
—Charles
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