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.

But solving that problem is already creating a new one. 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.

Adding to the problems is the timeline. GOP leaders and the White House are hoping to move the package through the House by the end of next week, with the House Budget Committee aiming to mark up a budget resolution on Thursday. That sort of schedule leaves little room for internal disagreements before the July 24 start of the August recess.

"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." "Especially how they've been spending resources at this point," the lawmaker said. "And the lack of information — on this plan but also the amount of stuff we're hearing about how money is being spent, mismanaged."

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.

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.

But the current blueprint doesn't include any spending cuts to offset the new funding, the sources said, already creating friction with conservatives.

"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."