House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday that he no longer supports a continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of December, The Hill reported. Time is ticking after the stopgap measure that was first passed in the House in September languishes in the Senate.
The continuing resolution they were first pushing would have only funded the government through November 21 anyway. Now, Johnson is trying to avoid the familiar problem of a large spending bill being voted on just in time for Christmas and instead is asking for temporary funding that brings the budget issue into January.
"A lot of people around here have PTSD about Christmas omnibus spending bills. We don’t want to do that," Johnson said during a news briefing. "It gets too close, and we don’t want to have that risk," he added.
Johnson believes a short-term funding bill that brings the issue into the new year "makes sense," but that it's by no means an easy feat at this point. "There’s some discussion about it. We’ll see where it lands," Johnson said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is on board with Johnson's timeline and confirmed this to reporters on Monday. "The longer runway is better," the South Dakota Republican said.
Johnson said that the House would come back to session if a deal could be struck for a continuing resolution. However, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, is not convinced and would instead like to see the government funded through Dec. 19.
Meanwhile, Democrats have dug into their position that they won't budge on reopening until Republicans roll over on extending their healthcare subsidies from the Affordable Care Act. Still, Thune said he was "optimistic" the government could reopen by Friday if both parties struck a deal, but that was before Tuesday's elections, which were favorable for Democrats.
Now it seems that their strategy of holding out was the right one politically, or at least it didn't hurt them the Democrats in elections around the country. As Fox News reported, this could make the shutdown go on even longer, as they think they have the upper hand against President Donald Trump and the GOP.
New Jersey elected Mikie Sherrill for governor in a decisive defeat against the Republican Jack Ciattarelli, and Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) believes this points to the president's failing. "This was a resounding defeat for Donald Trump. He should have woke up this morning and just immediately said, ‘I — we need to negotiate. We need to find an end to this shutdown,'" Kim claimed.
While Democrats remain steadfast in their opposition to striking a deal, Republicans are similarly obstinate, though Trump appears to recognize that perhaps it played a role in getting so many Democrats elected on Tuesday. During a White House breakfast on Wednesday, Trump conceded that the "shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans."
Others, like Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), believe that it was a temporary setback, but that the blame will ultimately fall on the Democrats. "I think the Democrats, you know, may feel emboldened by it, but I think that people are going to get past election results fairly quickly and start remembering that they've just unilaterally decided to shut down the government," Tillis told Fox News Digital.
"So I think it could be maybe a weak bump, but at the end of the day, we're going to get back to the reality that we've got to fund the government," Tillis added. As Politico reported, Tuesday's elections were not necessarily a referendum on Republicans, especially considering that they were held in an off-year, but there's no denying that they favored Democrats.
The losses were significant, as Democrats flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, as well as three statewide races. Californians voted to redraw the congressional maps in favor of Democrats, and New Jersey, which had looked like it might turn red after Trump's showing in the 2024 election, voted Sherrill in by 13 points.
Tuesday's results were not great for Republicans, but it doesn't necessarily mean any particular issue was the reason. The government shutdown is bad for both parties and looks more like a political stunt than real governance, even to Republicans.
