Speaker Johnson threatens a government shutdown to boost Trump's election lies

Politicians returned to the Congress in Washington, D.C., this week from their August break, and House Speaker Mike Johnson was eager to get back to not working for the American people.

Rep. Johnson, R-La., serves only one person as speaker – Donald Trump. He'll do anything for the former president now attempting a return to the White House. Johnson will even threaten to shut down the government.

Johnson inserted what he had to know was a poison pill in his new proposal to keep funding the government until March. It injects one of Trump's most common lies – that Democrats rely on votes from noncitizens to win federal elections like the presidency – into the everyday duties of politicians running the government.

Or, in Johnson's case, not running it.

His threat to push our government into a shutdown has nothing to do with what happens when government funding runs out on Sept. 30 and everything to do with Nov. 5, when voters pick our next president.

Trump on Tuesday doubled down the demand he made less than two weeks ago that Republicans shut down the government, lying on his social media platform that "DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO 'STUFF' VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS." Have you ever met a rational person who conversed on social media that way?

Johnson, with a constituency of one these days, appeared on CNN Tuesday afternoon and supported Trump, even as his own Republican colleagues were backing away from him on all this.

If the House speaker wants to swap in shameless pandering for running the government, then we should stop paying him. I'll come back to that.

Johnson is pushing the Republican lie about voting

Johnson is handcuffing government funding to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE), which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

And Americans who don't always have access to documents necessary for registration, who happen to lean Democratic in their voting? Well, tough luck for them.

The bill is voter suppression barely camouflaged as election security. It's a "messaging bill" that stands no chance of passing in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But it pushes into the national conversation the bogus and often racist theory that Democrats are trying to replace American voters with foreigners.

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As I wrote in May, the notion that noncitizens vote in ways that can shift the results of elections is just not supported by facts.

And it has been illegal since the 1920s for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, something that Congress further codified in 1996 with legislation signed by then-President Bill Clinton.

You might remember Clinton. He's a Democrat.

Even some Republicans are fed up with Johnson

Johnson has more immediate problems with his plan to amplify Trump's lies with the threat of a shutdown. His own Republican colleagues in the House think the speaker is out of order here.

Rep. Cory Mills, a hard-right Republican from Florida who cosponsored the SAVE Act, called Johnson's attempt a "farce" on Monday while telling Fox News there's no way to implement the law between now and the election.

Roll Call reported on Monday that Johnson, who rules with a narrow majority in the House, could only afford to lose four Republicans on the vote but at least five were against linking SAVE to the funding. Politico on Monday also found plenty of House Republicans pushing back against Johnson's maneuver.

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Looks like the House Republicans don't want to own a shutdown so close to an election.

The last shutdown, which lasted from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019, crimped America's gross domestic product by $11 billion. Try being the party that claims to be competent on the economy while rolling those dice again.

Congress has little financial motivation to do its job

Rep. Angie Craig, a three-term Democrat from Minnesota, has a solid way to fix the lack of consequences her colleagues feel during shutdowns. Craig last year reintroduced legislation that she first sponsored in her 2019 rookie season. It's a simple concept – members of the House and Senate get no pay during a government shutdown.

See, as of now, there are no financial consequences for members of Congress when they play politics with funding the government. They don't feel the pinch, like the 850,000 federal employees who went without pay during the last shutdown, which lasted 35 days.

The paychecks kept coming for the politicians, who left so many others to go without.

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Craig's bill, bottled up for nearly a year in Republican-controlled committees, would withhold one day of congressional pay for every 24 hours of shutdown.

They'd get that pay on the last day of their session in office to avoid conflicting with the U.S. Constitution's 27th Amendment, which says congressional pay can't change until after the next election.

Members of the House and Senate are paid $174,000 a year. So each day of shutdown would cost them $475.41 in this leap year, at least until their terms end.

Don't feel too bad for them. Their pay is nearly three times the national average for salaries at the end of 2023.

Johnson has admitted Republicans can't prove their claim

Johnson doesn't care about the consequences of a shutdown. His speakership is all about Trump. Johnson on Tuesday declared "I am in this to win this" after so many members of his caucus made clear he could not win this.

He already gave away the game in May when he said this about his unsubstantiated claims that noncitizens vote in large numbers in federal elections, impacting the outcome: "We all know intuitively that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it's not something that is easily proven."

That hits the Trump-Republican brand for lies about election fraud. They can't prove it, but they want to believe it. And that's all that matters. The lack of proof – and logic – is irrelevant.

The impact on people and the country's economy from a shutdown matters not to Johnson. He's only here to do Trump's bidding.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is US government shutting down? Johnson ties funding bill to Trump lie