\n<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 House Speaker Mike Johnson has lamented he would like to preside over a \u201cnormal Congress,\u201d but the chamber the Republican is leading is anything but.<\/p>\n
All-night sessions. Hours of dead zones with no action on the floor. Legislation being written on the fly, behind closed doors. Sudden votes scheduled. Spectacular failures. And, as happened this week, stunning turnarounds in which the House actually passes bills.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes it\u2019s an ugly process, sometimes it\u2019s a long process,” Johnson said after House passage of a bipartisan bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in history. “But we got it done.”<\/p>\n
Republicans, who face an uphill climb this election year to keep hold of their paper-thin House majority, appear at times as if they are still learning on the job, years after having returned to power in 2022, while they are also about to ask voters in November to rehire them for another term.<\/p>\n
This week’s starts and stops \u2014 for example, five hours of delay as Johnson huddled behind closed doors to salvage his agenda, then a sudden vote tally near 11 p.m. \u2014 would typically have been the kind of situation that shocked the political and procedural senses. Now, it’s just another Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Or two weeks ago, when a routine House Rules Committee hearing ended up becoming a midnight forum to debut a just-produced 14-page bill to revise a surveillance bill, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before it was rushed to the floor for a 2 a.m. vote. It failed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse Republicans have shown again that they can\u2019t govern,\u201d said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, part of Democratic leadership.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey routinely pass bills to the Senate that are way too extreme, then it ends up that we have all these floor session days where we\u2019re just doing nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Johnson, who took over for the ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two years ago, is presiding over one of the slimmest House majorities in modern times, leaving him no room to spare if he’s trying to pass legislation on party line votes, without Democrats.<\/p>\n
The speaker is juggling not only President Donald Trump’s priorities but also those of the various factions that make up his majority, from the conservative House Freedom Caucus to what remains of the GOP’s more pragmatic conservatives.<\/p>\n
And Johnson\u2019s own future is always in question, after Republicans chased other speakers, including McCarthy, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich, to early exits.<\/p>\n
Last year Johnson, of Louisiana, led passage of the party’s signature achievement, a big bill of tax breaks and safety net cuts, which Trump signed into law. At the time, he quipped about the difficulty of getting it over the finish line.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do so deeply desire to have just a normal Congress,\u201d the speaker said in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t happen anymore,” he said. \u201cOur way is to plow through and get it done.”<\/p>\n
Ahead of the fall elections, Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have discussed an agenda that includes the promise of another GOP-only budget package like the tax cuts bill that they could push through the House and the Senate, without Democratic votes.<\/p>\n
Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said Thursday that he expects \u201cthe centerpiece\u201d of that package “will be supporting our troops” with more than $100 billion in funding for the war against Iran as well as money to replenish defense munitions and other Pentagon-related needs.<\/p>\n
Despite the turbulent week in the House, Arrington said what they’re calling budget reconciliation 3.0 should be the \u201cnext order of business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet GOP lawmakers may decide it’s better to skip the hard work of legislating, and the dramatic upheavals that tend to come with it, and hit the campaign trail to win over voters instead.<\/p>\n
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., the chairman of the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged that trying to pass legislation with such a tight majority “can be rough. It’s ugly.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI’d be fine with letting us go home and campaign,\u201d Hudson said. \u201cBut we’ve got a lot of important work still to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Johnson’s most ardent sparring partners, those most conservative Republican lawmakers, turned their blame for the messy process not on Johnson’s leadership but on their own GOP allies across the Capitol in the Senate, who often dismiss the House’s work.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, sometimes, it gets a little tense,\u201d said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. \u201cBut we\u2019re still getting stuff done. We\u2019re sending it over to the Senate. So we look forward to them doing their job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n