Former President Donald Trump told the moderators at last week’s presidential debate that he has “concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare should he win the election. His instantly meme-able response spoke to how little thought he and other Republicans tend to put into his plans beyond reflexively opposing Democrats. It’s a tendency that was on full display Wednesday as House Republicans failed to pass their own bill to prevent a looming government shutdown.
As things stand, we are less than two weeks away from the federal government’s running out of money at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 1. The continuing resolution, or CR, that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., put forward would have extended current funding levels for an additional six months, punting the deadline until March. But he also chose to attach the SAVE Act, a bill that the GOP falsely claims is necessary to prevent noncitizen voting in the election.
It’s a brutal defeat for the GOP majority, but here’s the catch: This plan was always destined to fail — and Johnson knew it.
The bill went down in flames Wednesday by a vote of 202-220, with all but three Democrats in opposition and 14 Republicans joining them. (Two GOP members also simply voted “present.”) It’s a brutal defeat for the GOP majority, but here’s the catch: This plan was always destined to fail — and Johnson knew it. House leadership had already pulled the bill from the floor last week when it became obvious it lacked the Republican support necessary to pass.
And as has often been the case with this GOP majority, the objections came from two different wings of Johnson’s caucus. On one hand you have the far-right members of the “chaos caucus,” who are opposed to the current spending levels continuing without reductions. Republican defense hawks, on the other hand, were mad at the idea of not raising defense spending for a full half-year.
Democrats, meanwhile, weren’t about to support the SAVE Act, which would impose new hurdles on registering to vote to supposedly prevent the illegal and extremely rare act of noncitizens’ attempting to cast a ballot. The six-month extension Johnson proposed is also much longer than the December deadline that Democratic leaders are eyeing instead, along with boosts to funding for the Secret Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Even though NBC News reported that Johnson’s team was working all weekend to try to find a solution, absolutely nothing of substance changed from last week to Wednesday’s failed vote. The question then becomes, “But why?” Even if the GOP had managed to pass the bill, it would be dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate and face a veto if it somehow reached President Joe Biden’s desk. Instead, it’s Republicans’ fractiousness and inability to govern that are front and center in this news cycle after a week wasted.
Like with Trump’s non-answer on health care, there’s been plenty of time for Johnson to figure out what to do to prevent a shutdown. But in the walkup to the doomed vote, he hadn’t shared anything resembling a backup plan, which Axios reported on Tuesday evening left his colleagues “baffled.” As last as just before the hopeless vote took place, Johnson reportedly “told senior Republicans in a private meeting that he had a Plan B — but wouldn’t tell them what it was.” The result has been a case of the GOP running headfirst into a wall after blowing by several signs declaring, “Warning: Dead End Approaching.” We’ve been through this exact scenario too many times now to assume that Republicans will learn their lesson based on this embarrassment. The most likely reasoning is that Johnson couldn’t move forward with a so-called clean spending bill, one that Democrats could also support, without first showing that he’d at least tried to pass the SAVE Act. After all, Trump has been a vocal advocate of a shutdown without the bill’s passing. The former president posted yet again on his Truth Social account Wednesday morning that if the GOP doesn’t get “every ounce” of the SAVE Act, then House Republicans “should not agree to a continuing resolution in any way shape or form.” It is likely only through failure that Johnson could see a path to success before the deadline at the end of the month. It’s a song and dance that Johnson’s members were begrudgingly acknowledging even before the vote. “It’ll fail, then we’ll go back and do something that’s to the end of the year clean,” Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., told Punchbowl News about the quixotic effort, describing Democrats’ preferred bill. “That’s just reality. We’ve been through this drill enough times to know that nobody’s come up with a silver bullet to put somebody in a chokehold ’till they scream, ‘Uncle.’” We’ve been through this exact scenario too many times now to assume that Republicans will learn their lesson based on this embarrassment. There’s also only a few days left now for Johnson to once again go to Democrats, hat in hand, asking them for votes to prevent a major self-inflicted wound right before Election Day. That is, provided he takes that move without the Senate’s first passing a bill of its own to force his hand. If Johnson does wait for the Senate to move first, it’ll only highlight that he has no plan — let alone the concept of one — that could stave off the GOP’s latest slow-motion disaster.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
