Speaker Johnson's government funding strategy is on life support as defections mount

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson’s strategy to tie a short-term government funding bill to a Donald Trump-backed proposal to overhaul voting laws was on life support Monday after a band of conservative rebels vowed to vote no on the package.

Without a stopgap funding bill, money will run out and the federal government will shut down at the end of the month.

Because of the GOP’s razor-thin majority, Johnson, R-La., can afford only four Republican defections if all members vote. At least five Republicans — Cory Mills, of Florida; Matt Rosendale, of Montana; Tim Burchett, of Tennessee; Jim Banks, of Indiana; and Thomas Massie, of Kentucky — say they wouldn’t support the Johnson plan to avert a government shutdown on Sept. 30.

Many other Republicans said they were on the fence.

Johnson is proposing a six-month continuing resolution, or CR, coupled with the so-called SAVE Act, legislation backed by former President Donald Trump that would change voting laws nationwide by requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Trump has called on congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE Act — which Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, oppose — or allow the government to shut down.

Mills slammed Johnson's strategy as a “farce” and said it would do nothing to secure the southern border.

“If we can’t shut the border down, I’m in favor of shutting the government down,” Mills told reporters.

Rosendale said, “I haven’t supported a CR since I arrived here, and I don’t intend on starting now.”

He dismissed concerns that a shutdown could backfire on Republicans, saying he doesn’t think there ultimately will be a shutdown.

Asked whether his CR plan could pass the House, Johnson replied: “We’ll find out.”

The growing number of defections marked a rough start for Republicans as lawmakers returned to the Capitol from their six-week summer recess.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has said the Johnson plan is dead on arrival in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has vowed to veto the package if it ever gets to his desk.

But with the GOP plan headed for defeat in the House, Democrats may not need to kill it. Instead, they are pushing for a "clean CR" — short-term funding with nothing attached to it.

“The House Republican CR is simply unserious. It’s pure partisan posturing,” Schumer said in a floor speech Monday. “Democrats will do everything we can to avoid a Republican-manufactured shutdown. We are ready to work on a bipartisan bill that will keep the government open. Any extraneous provisions that hinder that goal should be set aside.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., predicted that Republicans will pay a price if they shut down the government.

“I hope the Republicans have learned their lesson that when they shut the government down, the people will punish them,” Raskin said. “And government shutdowns are an enormously wasteful and profligate and self-destructive thing to do. … Donald Trump is coaching them to do it.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com