Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to meet with Rules Committee Republicans shortly before the panel convenes this afternoon to take up a massive shutdown-ending funding package, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the private plans.
The meeting is expected to include discussion of how to handle conservative hard-liners’ demands to attach a partisan elections bill to the $1.2 trillion spending package.
But any change to the bill could add days more to the three-day partial government shutdown that Johnson is hoping to end Tuesday with House approval of the Senate-passed legislation that combines five full-year funding bills with a two-week extension of Homeland Security spending.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is vowing to block any move to tee up the Senate-approved package for a final vote unless Johnson moves to attach the elections bill, known as the SAVE Act. With a razor-thin majority, Johnson can afford no more than one Republican defection on a party-line vote.
Johnson got a helping hand Monday from President Donald Trump, who posted on Truth Social that he wanted the bill “through the House and to my desk, where I will sign it into Law, IMMEDIATELY!”
“There can be NO CHANGES at this time,” he wrote. “We will work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised, but we cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Monday that GOP leaders haven’t made any final decisions on how to handle the SAVE Act but Trump emphasized in a recent Oval Office meeting that he wanted the funding legislation quickly passed.
“The president obviously really wants this,” he said.
The SAVE Act, which passed the House with scant Democratic support last year, would require citizenship documentation to register to vote and several cut back on mail voting. A new version of the bill would also require photo ID to vote.
Tacking it on to the funding package would essentially guarantee that the government shutdown Johnson and Trump are desperately trying to end as quickly as possible would continue for days — or longer. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Monday that the SAVE Act was “dead on arrival” in the other chamber, with Democrats arguing it creates unnecessary barriers to voting.
“If House Republicans add the SAVE Act to the bipartisan appropriations package it will lead to another prolonged Trump government shutdown,” Schumer said.
Luna said in an interview Monday that her position has not changed as Johnson faces a growing pressure campaign from both his own members and an army of hard-right online influencers pressing for the election bill’s inclusion.
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