Mike Johnson ends one GOP revolt — and walks into another

Just as House Speaker Mike Johnson ended one Republican revolt, he was facing the prospect of another.

As House conservatives lifted their weekslong floor blockade on Tuesday -- allowing GOP leaders to resume moving big-ticket legislation -- Republicans were already bracing for another fight over a third reconciliation package.

Johnson persuaded conservative holdouts to abandon their demand that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act before the House moved any partisan legislation by offering a compromise: He will attach the voting measure to any upcoming appropriations bills and put a form of it in the reconciliation bill.

Republicans are now trying to advance a reconciliation package -- one designed to fund the Iran war -- with a version of the SAVE America Act attached to it, exposing new divisions in the House GOP and setting up a potential standoff with the Senate.

"I just don't see the path forward right now," one House Republican told MS NOW, requesting anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. "There's too many things going on that just complicate the world we live in right now." The lawmaker continued that there is "a lot of distrust with the administration right now."

Republicans are currently eyeing a reconciliation framework that would include roughly $70 billion for defense, $20 billion for agriculture and the SAVE America Act, according to three House Republicans familiar with the still-evolving plan.

But the current blueprint doesn't include any spending cuts to offset the new funding, the sources said, already creating friction with conservatives. The plan includes sections from four committees: the House Administration Committee, the House Agriculture Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, the sources said. NOTUS first reported on the framework.

It's unclear what form the SAVE America Act would take. The Senate parliamentarian previously ruled that the voting measure cannot be included in a reconciliation bill, according to the strict rules of the budgetary process. As a workaround, Johnson has proposed creating a fund that states can use to implement parts of the legislation.

During a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning, Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind. -- a member of the Budget Committee -- complained about not being invited to a recent meeting at Camp David. "I don't care if the meeting was held at IHOP -- the entire Budget Committee should have been included," Houchin said, according to the member. After the gathering, she said she had "serious concerns" with the framework as it has been proposed. "We have to get this right," she wrote on X.

Asked if he was comfortable with so much new money for defense without spending cuts, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., had a simple response: "No, I'm not."

Johnson, for his part, says he is optimistic. "We're going to take care of national defense, we're going to meet our first priorities, we're going to do it in the order that we can gather the votes for," Johnson said Tuesday morning. "Reconciliation 3.0 is in process."

"Speaker Johnson, we've got great faith in him," Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., told reporters Tuesday.

Asked about the reconciliation package, one conservative House Republican summed up the situation in four words: "Everything here is stupid." "I feel a lot of ways, frustration surrounds all my feelings," the lawmaker said.