Speaker Mike Johnson is getting some well-deserved coal in his stocking from conservatives livid with the Louisiana Republican’s attempt to play Santa with a Christmas list stopgap spending bill.
The massive house-of-cards measure Johnson countenanced collapsed Wednesday amid scathing criticism from conservatives and an incoming president who urged Republicans to get “SMART and Tough” with Democrats.
‘Rich People’
Johnson loathes the descriptor, but the proposed resolution the speaker has presided over is nothing more than a bloated omnibus bill packed with pork, censorship, and sweetheart deals for Congress. Turning from his reported intentions to deliver a clean “continuing resolution” to keep the bloated federal government fully open for another few months, the simple spending plan has grown to a bloated 1,500-plus pages.
On Wednesday, the scam proposal included a possible pay hike for congressional members and a provision allowing senators and representatives to opt out of Obamacare for better taxpayer-funded insurance.
Rank-and-file lawmakers currently earn $174,000 annually, with higher pay for those in leadership posts. House members earlier this year blocked a proposed pay raise despite complaints from some.
“I live in the Washington, D.C., area. It’s an expensive area in which to live,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., said in June. “This is a serious issue as to whether or not the only people who can serve here are rich people.”
With plenty of perks, federal lawmakers are faring much better than most Americans, critics assert. The proposed pay jump would potentially give lawmakers a 3.8 percent raise, or about $6,600 a year, pushing gross pay to $180,600 in 2025.
The congressional benefits package would give members a pass from the awful Obamacare health insurance the First Branch of government has stuck millions of Americans with. It also would allow the lawmakers to enroll in the Cadillac plans of the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program.
‘A Certain Sandwich’
Per usual, a dull sword of Damocles hangs over the absurd stopgap spending battle, with the threat of a “government shutdown” if Congress doesn’t reach a deal by midnight Friday (Spoiler Alert: Much of the government doesn’t actually shut down at a funding impasse). Johnson’s gold chariot turns back into a pumpkin. It’s a Cinderella story in which many of the players are the wicked stepmother.
On Wednesday, a day after the omnibus was released, the complaints came fast and furious. President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his incoming co-director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), blasted the bloated spending package, which crumbed under its own weight and awfulness. Trump told Fox News on Wednesday that he is “totally against” the stopgap spending plan. Musk admonished the House on X, the social platform he owns, asserting, “This bill should not pass.”
“Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?” Musk wrote above a photo of the massive omnibus.
Some lawmakers were not as delicate.
“There’s a certain sandwich that’s made of feces, and that’s what I would compare this to,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said Wednesday, according to CBS News. She raised concerns about jamming $110 billion in disaster relief into the omnibus bill. “This is a s**t sandwich. I don’t know how else to say that we’re being forced into this position.”
Fellow Florida Rep. Kat Cammack described the measure as “a band-aid that is laced with fentanyl,” the news outlet reported.
‘Start Acting Like It’
Johnson was feeling the strain early on over a catch-all spending bill that could prove professionally costly for the ever-equivocating speaker, who, with a razor-thin majority, is hanging on to his leadership post by a fraying thread.
Complicating matters further for the embattled Johnson, Trump and incoming Vice President J.D. Vance on Wednesday called for a clean continuing resolution and for raising the debt ceiling before the nation’s untenable $36.2 trillion debt bumps up against the reinstated ceiling on Day 1 of the new year.
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025,” Trump and Vance said in a statement posted on X. “The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”
The soon-to-be 47th president rallied Republicans to “GET SMART and TOUGH.”
“If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF. It is [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [President Joe] Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief,” Trump wrote. He added that the chaos surrounding the funding plan wouldn’t be happening “IF WE HAD A REAL PRESIDENT. WE WILL IN 32 DAYS!”
“Smart” and “tough” have not necessarily been the hallmarks of Johnson in his rocky tenure as Speaker of the House. While there surely are political realities all congressional leaders face, particularly in crafting spending bills, this is a mess of Johnson’s making. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters late Wednesday that Republicans would “continue to work through the night, through the morning to get an agreement we can bring to the floor.”
They’ll need to come up with something better than selling out conservative principles and playing wet nurse to big-spending liberals if they hope to have a deal worth making. A deal that reflects the mandate that voters just handed conservatives.
In other words, they should govern like they won an election.
“We won. @HouseGOP should start acting like it,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, wrote in response to Musk’s post on X.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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