Congress creating Christmas crisis after close vote crushed coup

Speaker Mike Johnson said the House of Representatives will vote this week on a three-month stopgap funding bill to prevent the federal government from shutting down but the Republican scheme would only last through Dec. 20.

If the measure goes into effect, the congressional action would avert a government shutdown that would begin at the October 1 if nothing happens, but it also sets the stage for another critical deadline only days before Christmas.

Congressional lawmakers on Sunday agreed to a deal to avert the looming government shutdown, without the harsh voter registration restrictions demanded by disgraced former President Donald Trump, who was hoping to sabotage the election.

Advancing a three-month stopgap spending agreement with an additional $232 million for the Secret Service to boost security for presidential election candidates and allows faster Federal Emergency Management Agency spending  to aid natural disaster victims.

Republicans are facing terrible odds to maintain control of their slim House majority and a shutdown, which would shutter some vital government services, on the eve of November’s elections, would have put more GOP candidates in jeopardy.

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote Sunday in a letter to House Republicans. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Johnson brokered a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democrats against the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline — while mired in disputes within his conference —  to pass a continuing resolution, or CR, and dodge what could have been a politically costly self-inflicted disaster.

The arrangement sets up a frenzied week in Congress: Johnson will likely need to rely on support from Democrats rather than his own party to pass the measure; the Senate will need a bipartisan agreement to expedite the bill’s passage and beat the shutdown deadline.

“If both sides continue to work in good faith, I am hopeful that we can wrap up work on the CR this week, well before the September 30 deadline,” said Schumer. “The key to finishing our work this week will be bipartisan cooperation, in both chambers.”

House Republicans prefer a six-month funding bill that would push annual spending bills into March 2025, allowing the next president influence in the debate. That framework would also prevent a massive end-of-year spending bill, called an “omnibus,” loathed by GOP lawmakers.

As part of a plot to throw the upcoming election into disarray, Trump demanded that congressional Republicans include language that mandated proof of citizenship for federal voter registration.

And if the speaker could not include that measure — “and every ounce of it,” as he wrote on social media — Trump pressured GOP members of Congress to reject a deal and force a shutdown.

Noncitizen voting is already illegal in federal elections, and cases of voter fraud committed by noncitizens are exceedingly rare but the prospect of changing the rules increases the chances that the process would be corrupted.

Enough of a delay could take presidential decision-making out of the hands of the voters and the Electoral College, and allow the House of Representatives to select the next White House occupant. After Trump was soundly defeated by Joe Biden in 2020, the schemes involving fake electors and the January 6 insurrection were intended to do just that, so this is not the first time that Republicans have worked to undermine American democracy.

Johnson put legislation with a six-month CR and new voting restrictions on the House floor last week, but 14 Republicans joined with nearly all Democrats to reject it in a display of faith in democracy from across the ideological spectrum but the vast majority of GOP congressional representatives were willing to help advance a second attempted coup d’etat.