House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Republican leadership faced resistance from all sides of the Republican conference last week to a government funding bill.
The bill was meant to open a budget showdown with Democrats, but Johnson was forced to call off a vote scheduled for Wednesday when it became clear he didn't have enough Republican votes to pass it. Complicating matters, opposition comes from a variety of different, sometimes contradictory groups.
As the congressional funding battle heats up, here are the Republican factions to watch.
Hardliners
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana)’s decision to attach a six-month interim funding plan, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), to the Protecting American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act embodies a strategy promoted by hardline conservatives and former President Trump.
One of conservatives' biggest goals in the budget fight is for the two houses to reach a budget deal that would extend the Sept. 30 government shutdown deadline until March 2025, and some believe the SAVE Act would give them an advantage in eventual negotiations with the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Hardline conservatives see the effort as a way to avoid being swamped with a year-end omnibus bill that would combine all 12 annual budget bills, and say the move will give the next president more influence over shaping the federal budget for the remainder of 2025, with many still confident in Trump's chances of retaking the White House in November.
Plans to bring the bill to a vote were scrapped last week, but conservatives say leadership members will work through the weekend to forge a consensus and hope the plan will garner more support in the coming days.
“We're hopeful we'll get support, and if we don't, we'll go back to square one,” Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill last week.
“What I don't want to do is open my checkbook to the Senate in December. I really don't want to.”
Defense Hawks
Defense hawks were the main opposition to the bill, fearing that freezing the budget at current levels for six months would have a negative impact on the military.
“If it goes past Dec. 31, I'm not going to vote for it,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told The Hill last week, telling other reporters that a six-month stopgap would be “terrible for defense.”
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee that writes the Pentagon's budget each year, also told reporters last week that he plans to support the speaker in “this effort” but has concerns.
“This is the biggest operation in the world,” Calvert said, “and there's no way it could be run in that time frame, so I wish we could get this done sooner.”
A tentative Republican-backed plan would keep funding for federal programs roughly at levels set when Congress last debated spending for fiscal 2024. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned in a recent letter that such a proposal could pose “numerous challenges” for the military, a sentiment that defense hawks like Calvert said they don't disagree with.
Fiscal Hawk
The stopgap bill has also received a lukewarm response from fiscal hawks, some of whom oppose the very notion of CR altogether and argue that Congress should focus on passing the 12 annual funding bills.
Some have opposed the temporary measure, citing the national debt, which has ballooned to more than $35 trillion.
Rep. Corey Mills (R-Fla.) supports the SAVE Act, but in a statement last week said he would vote against the CR Act if it came up for debate, pointing to the national debt and interest costs.
“In fact, in the past year alone, our total national debt has skyrocketed by $2.45 trillion – that's $6.71 billion per day, $4.66 million per minute and $77,631 per second. Interest on the national debt alone now exceeds $3 billion per day,” Mills said.
“This level of reckless spending is simply unsustainable for our country. We cannot continue printing money that fuels inflation and destroys the middle class. This is the worst form of fiscal irresponsibility.”
Moderate
Moderate Republicans have concerns about the strategy and about triggering a government shutdown just weeks before Election Day.
The CR Plus SAVE Act is certain to die when it reaches the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Moderates also expressed concern about what a potential Plan B might look like if Johnson's original proposal doesn't materialize.
The deliberations come as Democrats have grown bullish in recent weeks about their chances of retaking the House of Representatives, with Vice President Harris gaining popularity as the party's presidential nominee.
leadership
Republican leadership is facing pressure from across the Republican conference and beyond.
President Trump has stepped up pressure on Republicans to stick to his plan to attach the SAVE Act to the stopgap measures, but many in his party acknowledge the bill is unlikely to pass due to opposition from Senate Democrats and the White House.
“Unless House and Senate Republicans can get absolute assurances about the security of our elections, they should not move forward with a continuing budget resolution of any kind,” Trump said in a social media post last week as GOP stopgap proposals continued to weather a storm of opposition.
Meanwhile, others in the conference are pushing for a “clean” stopgap bill that would extend the deadline until December, an idea backed by some Democrats, as lawmakers from both parties urge Congress to finish its budget work by the end of the year.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also told reporters on Tuesday that he thinks lawmakers should instead focus on completing the funding effort and “try to do it as quickly as possible.”
“Personally, I don't think it's a good idea to immediately create a fiscal crisis for a new president, and we're going to have a new president,” Cole said, “But honestly, it's probably going to depend on who wins the election. Congress is always happy to pass the ball if they want to.”
