House Speaker Mike Johnson has gone from zero to Mitch McConnell in record time. The “conservative firebrand” who was elected last Oct. 25 to lead Republicans to greater glory now resembles his depleted Senate counterpart. With sickening speed, Johnson has mastered McConnell’s art of giving Democrats what they want while getting nothing in return.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday morning signed a foreign aid bill that crawled out of Johnson’s GOP House. The $95 billion measure features $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, and $8 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. The Jerusalem-bound total includes $9 billion in humanitarian relief for Gaza, never mind fears that some funds might trickle down to the Jew-killers of Hamas.
To the horror of Americans enraged over Biden’s border bloodshed, this new law includes not a dime to secure the southern frontier or stop illegal aliens from invading this country.
This new law does not allocate $100 to buy sunblock for America’s embattled Border Patrol agents. It lacks even $5 to purchase a refreshing Gatorade for National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd.
“We are beyond disappointed that the House would give aid to secure the borders of foreign countries but gave nothing to allow the Border Patrol to secure the safety of the United States,” Judd told Fox News. “There’s nothing more backwards. I wouldn’t have even expected taxpayers’ dollars. They could have given us policy, and that would have been enough.”
Johnson could have forged an adequate deal with Biden: “OK, Mr. President. House Republicans will agree not to spend a dollar on border security. But we need three things from you: Immediately, and for the rest of your presidency, you shall restore President Trump’s successful Remain-in-Mexico policy, stop unilaterally paroling illegal aliens into America, and deport all violent felons currently in federal custody.”
Instead, Johnson exchanged Republican leverage — support for Ukraine aide — for … zippo.
True, Johnson wields a one-seat majority. (It apparently grew to two, due to Wednesday’s untimely death of Rep. Donald Payne, D-New Jersey.) This is down from a five-vote margin, as the 118th Congress began.
The Great Dwindle started with the Dec. 1 expulsion of innocent-until-proven-guilty Republican George Santos of New York — before he was tried, convicted, or even acquitted on federal ethics charges. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California resigned on Dec. 31, after the House removed his gavel in October.
This year, three more Republicans fled early: Colorado’s Ken Buck, Ohio’s Bill Johnson, and (most disappointingly) Mike Gallagher, the once-promising, highly scenic Wisconsin wunderkind. Like cast members in a Broadway show who ran home during Act II, these deserters abandoned their colleagues and their constituents before finishing their terms.
For shame!
Nonetheless, Johnson whines that he cannot steer anything decent onto Biden’s desk because Chuck Schumer and the Democrats run the Senate. So, Johnson reckons, why not simply pass Democrat-friendly bills in the House and get on with it?
“We have a one-vote margin,” Johnson said. “So, I have virtually zero leverage to be able to negotiate and get a better package.”
Wrong!
Johnson has little wiggle room, but it’s more than “virtually zero.”
Has Johnson not heard the phrase “conference committee”?
Here is how divided government should work: The GOP House passes the most conservative bill that it can. The Democrat Senate adopts what its majority wants — probably a puree of higher taxes, hefty outlays, and heavy-handed mandates. The two bills converge in a conference committee, where bicameral lawmakers publicly craft compromise language.
Each house votes separately on the ensuing “conference report.”
If the final bill survives, it likely would be left of the House’s measure but right of the Senate’s version. Republicans and Democrats hold their noses, and something OK — neither dazzling nor dreadful — reaches the president’s desk.
THAT is how to enact a $95 billion foreign aid measure with at least a tourniquet to seal the border. Unforgivably, Johnson could not deliver even a Band-Aid to cover two inches of America’s southern boundary.
Johnson has failed to follow or even attempt this lemons-into-lemonade strategy.
Capitol Hill has seen few, if any, conference committees since before Obama–Biden, when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi torpedoed this tradition of American democracy. Instead, they drafted major bills behind their offices’ closed doors.
Reid and Pelosi then plopped these tree-killing monstrosities onto the Senate and House floors and demanded votes on them before anyone read them.
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” Pelosi notoriously said about Obamacare as it slithered into law.
Johnson, 52, might not have learned about conference committees in high school civics class and saw few, if any, on the Hill. He arrived in the House on Jan. 3, 2019, about a decade after norm-killing Democrats put a pillow over this practice and pushed down hard, with both hands. So, Johnson’s disuse of conference committees might not be entirely his fault.
In a highly non-scientific survey, I raised this matter with three very bright friends of mine. I quizzed a politically savvy 32-year-old candidate for local office on the West Coast and two gentlemen in their mid-20s: A Midwestern wealth manager who offers his opinions on the economy and current events on TV and a severely well-informed East Coast cable news producer with extensive congressional and campaign experience. None could define a conference committee. This speaks volumes about the dormancy of this legislative institution and the inadequacy of American civic education.
Nonetheless, one expects better from a House speaker, his staff, and older Republican members, at least one of whom must have whispered this concept into Johnson’s ear. If Johnson doesn’t know something, he should heed those who do.
Unfortunately, Johnson’s cowardice has triggered GOP failure after GOP failure:
- Rather than complete McCarthy’s passage of seven of 12 individual appropriations bills (all bearing conservative budgets and policies) Johnson filled the Swamp.
- Two “minibuses” substituted for a typical omnibus spending orgy.
- A baffling, “laddered” continuing resolution process threatened two potential government shutdowns.
- Thousand-page measures raced to the House floor for votes without 72-hour pauses, so members and citizens could digest them.
- Bills passed that violated the Hastert Rule: GOP legislation must win a majority of Republican votes.
- The Green New Deal, transgenderism, and abortion subsidies: Fully funded.
- Fresh earmarks included $400,000 for a children’s Gender Affirming Clothing Program, $1 million for electric-vehicle infrastructure in Republican-rich Chicago, and $200 million for a new FBI headquarters.
- And much more.
Amid this pageant of apostasy, Johnson feared that if the GOP House did not pass Democrat-friendly spending bills, the government would shut down in March — maybe once, maybe twice. This, Johnson said, “would be very painful for the American people. They would blame the Republicans.”
This comment confirms Johnson’s paucity of imagination and creativity.
Flanked by Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Johnson should have held the House’s shutdown-prevention bills in his hands. With the entire GOP majority on the move, the Republicans as a whole should have traversed the House’s hallway, the Capitol Rotunda, and then hand-delivered to the Senate the legislation needed to keep the government open.
As news cameras bore witness, Johnson should have said: “We, the House Republican majority, have passed this budget bill to keep the U.S. government open for the American people. Having fulfilled our constitutional duty, we urge the Senate to pass this bill and keep Washington’s lights blazing. All that can close the government now is Democrat inaction.”
In case of a federal shutdown, Republicans could roll that video, remind Americans that the GOP played its part to keep government open, and rightfully blame Democrats for padlocked museums and unprinted Social Security checks.
Alas, Johnson lacks the media savvy to stage such a simple, powerful event and paint Senate Democrats into a corner.
Under Schumer, Democrats fight with machetes.
Under Johnson and the gelatinous McConnell, Republicans fight with badminton rackets.
Last Saturday, Johnson made matters worse by passing separate bills on Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific and then pressing them into a giant meatball for the Senate to swallow in one gulp.
The whole affair soured top Republicans.
- “This is some trickery that I don’t like or appreciate,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) smoldered Monday evening on Fox Business Channel’s The Bottom Line. “This is Republican-on-Republican violence.”
- “For months, House Republicans — specifically, Speaker Mike Johnson — have been unequivocal that we would not send billions in additional aid to Ukraine without securing our own border first,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) lamented via X. “This package represents a complete reversal of a position that previously unified the Republican conference, despite the clear & present danger the southern border represents to U.S. national security.”
- “The number-one issue that our voters wanted [House Republicans] to address is the southern border and the massive influx of foreigners by the millions coming into this country, and we don’t know who these people are,” a visibly disgusted Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida) told journalists in Naples on Tuesday. “And they basically just surrendered on the border. They now have no leverage to do anything on the border.”
“They had an opportunity to insist that Biden accept the border if he wanted all the foreign aid, and they decided to capitulate,” DeSantis added. “And so, he got everything he wants,” DeSantis concluded. “And Republican voters did not get anything with respect to stopping this problem at the southern border.”
It’s not too late for Johnson to use conference committees to accomplish something — anything — positive as speaker. Unfortunately, withholding aid to Ukraine until Republican priorities were addressed was the GOP’s most valuable tradable asset. As Mitch McConnell’s finest student, Mike Johnson swapped a marlin for a wormless hook.
After betraying Republicans yet again, these two squids now will swim away and try their best not to become calamari.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.
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