Speaker Mike Johnson laid out two potential paths to avert a government shutdown in a closed-door meeting with the House GOP Friday morning, according to a slide presented in the closed-door House GOP conference and shared with POLITICO.
There's less than 12 hours left before a shutdown deadline.
Option one was moving a stopgap bill that funds the government through March that largely matches the package endorsed by Donald Trump that failed in the House on Thursday evening, except it wouldn't include raising the debt limit. Johnson said that package would pass via suspension, meaning it would need a two-thirds majority to pass and therefore a lot of Democratic votes. It would include a one-year extension of the farm bill and $110 billion in disaster aid.
The second plan he laid out would involve three separate votes: one a stopgap funding bill into March, another on money for natural disasters and a third on aid for farmers. Johnson would try to pass that plan through the Rules Committee, meaning it would have to clear a couple of tough hurdles before a simple majority passage vote.
No decision has been made about which path Johnson will choose, according to multiple Republicans leaving the meeting, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).
“There’s still a possibility of a vote today," Scalise added.
Two Republican lawmakers who spoke with Johnson on Friday said they do not expect House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to help pass the second option, though it's unclear if Democrats would back the first plan. Some Democrats indicated they wouldn't make a decision until they saw bill text.
“We’ll see what they put on the floor. We want a bipartisan solution. We had a bipartisan solution,” said the No. 3 House Democrat Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) as he left a closed-door meeting with purple-district Democratic lawmakers.
The GOP meeting is ongoing, as members openly discuss the best path forward.
“The speaker is not telling people how it’s going to be," said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) as he briefly left the meeting. "There’s not been a play call yet.”
“I think they are a long ways away from deciding anything," said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who added he looks forward to joining the Senate in January.
Meanwhile, neither option will address the debt ceiling, a demand Trump made on Wednesday when he tanked the original bipartisan spending plan. But House GOP leaders said they have an agreement tackle the issue next year when they pass major, party-line bills through the reconciliation process. They would use either one or two reconciliation bills — which will also focus on taxes, energy and the border — to both raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion as well as cut $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending.
One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said the theory is that Johnson’s debt-ceiling-in-reconciliation plan is part of a gentleman’s agreement that helps unlock the speaker's proposal to keep the government funded.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
