House Speaker Mike Johnson cancels stopgap funding vote amid GOP opposition

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., canceled a vote on a stopgap funding bill Wednesday amid growing opposition from the Republican Conference.
This bill, aimed at keeping the government funded for six more months past the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline, also included a provision requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
At the start of the week, only a few lawmakers had publicly opposed Johnson’s plans, saying they’d prefer to focus on passing the 12 spending bills individually instead of leaning on a six-months-long continuing resolution before advancing an omnibus, which happens nearly every year.
By Wednesday, the number of detractors grew to at least 15, as NBC News reported. Some lawmakers argued the stopgap should be only three months long, ending by Christmastime.
Johnson can’t afford to lose that many votes because of the slim Republican majority in the House. “We are in the consensus-building business,” he told reporters midday Wednesday.
If the speaker somehow advances a short-term stopgap bill with the SAVE Act, it would likely be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“Speaker Johnson, scrap your plan. Don’t just delay the vote. Find a better one that can pass in a bipartisan way,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in response to Johnson’s decision to postpone the vote, according to The Associated Press.
In response to Schumer, Utah Sen. Mike Lee wrote in X, “Chuck Schumer really, really doesn’t want to vote on the SAVE Act—or apparently any bill to keep the government funded.” Lee is a sponsor of the SAVE Act, and was a proponent of including it in a continuing resolution.
Former President Donald Trump is urging GOP lawmakers not to vote for a clean stopgap bill without the SAVE Act.
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN – CLOSE IT DOWN!!!” Trump wrote on social media.
Johnson has said he isn’t interested in a government shutdown, and neither is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who called it “a bad idea — at any time,” as The Hill reported. Still, the House speaker hasn’t indicated how he wants to proceed amid the opposition within his own party.
“I think we first have to see what the House sends us,” McConnell said. “And, of course, how to handle that comes down to (Majority Leader Schumer).”
The White House also criticized Johnson’s plan. “Instead of meeting the security and disaster needs of the Nation, this bill includes unrelated cynical legislation that would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls,” President Joe Biden’s administration said in a statement this week.