Speaker Johnson faces first major challenge as government shutdown deadline looms

Amna Nawaz:

In the meantime, on Capitol Hill today, tensions boiled over, just days ahead of a potential government shutdown. But there's hope of avoiding that, as the House passed its budget Band-Aid to keep funding flowing for a few more months.

Congressional correspondent Lisa Desjardins is here with me now.

Lisa, good to see you.

Lisa Desjardins:

Good to see you.

Amna Nawaz:

So tell us about this plan. What does it do and how did it pass?

Lisa Desjardins:

Well, it passed overwhelmingly just in the past few minutes. It needed a two-thirds vote to pass because they had to suspend the rules to do it.

Now, let's talk about it. I know it seems like it's complex, but actually Speaker Johnson's plan is relatively simple. It's just novel. Here's what this proposal would do. It would effectively fund government in two parts. The noncontroversial, less controversial agencies would be funded through January 19, then others through February 2.

Those agencies, think of things like dealing with immigration, the border, abortion, all of those things that might take a little bit longer. What is not in this plan, notably, is funding for Ukraine, funding for Israel.

It looks like Congress will go home without dealing with either of those two. This bill is on track now to move straight to the Senate. Johnson said this is not what conservatives want. He knows that. They wanted spending cuts. They wanted something for conservatives. But he said, listen, I have been speaker for three weeks and this is what we needed to do.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA):

We're not surrendering. We're fighting, but you have to be wise about choosing the fights. You got to fight the fights that you can win. And we're going to. And you're going to see this House majority stand together on our principle and we're going to do that.

Lisa Desjardins:

Just like former Speaker McCarthy, however, he can be ousted. And some conservatives who did take out Speaker McCarthy for doing this exact same thing said they're not happy, but they're not yet quite going to move against Johnson.

Here's Bob Good of Virginia.

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA):

We believe he's a conservative. We believe he's a trustworthy, honest guy. And he — we did put him in the game in the fourth quarter when we're down 35-0, so we can't hold him to the same standards as the guy who got us to that 35-0 deficit.

However, we don't expect him to come in and punt on third down, and that's what we think he's doing here.

Lisa Desjardins:

It's definitely football season, but I will use a weather analogy. This is stormy weather. This is a rainbow that has appeared.

Amna Nawaz:

OK, so Speaker Johnson gets it through the House with help from Democrats. What's ahead in the Senate? Is that going to pass?

Lisa Desjardins:

Right. It looks like it could pass in the Senate. There is a question of timing that I'm going to come back to, but I want to point out something extraordinary that's happened here, an important alignment of leaders.

Let's look at what Speaker Johnson had to do here. The new speaker had to first align with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader. Nearly every Democrat in the House voted for this bill, and they needed those votes. So then next had to make sure on board were the Senate leaders, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell.

And, in fact, they are in line, all four of these leaders right now. Notably, Mitch McConnell sold this bill especially well, telling people this needs to be a win for the new speaker. It needs to be a sign that we are enforcing this kind of stability, this kind of deal-making. So let's back this now and hope that this will help us get through other things.

Now, on timing, the issue is, the Senate clock is not good for deadlines. Any single senator can slow this down. Rand Paul often likes to threaten this. He has said he's still considering a slowdown, but usually a deal can be made. He usually gets something and goes along in the end, but we're watching that.

Amna Nawaz:

Something Speaker Johnson said, as you reported, really struck me. He said, you have to fight the fights that you can win. What are the bigger politics we have to consider here?

Lisa Desjardins:

It is good timing for us because we have a poll that is supposed to come out tomorrow morning, and polling isn't everything, but we thought this showed some important things about today, and we asked and were able to give you two of the results from that tonight that show us what's happening politically.

First of all, we asked people, is it more important for Speaker Mike Johnson to compromise or stand in principle? And look at that, compromise, 67 percent. Even as he was saying, we want to stand on principle later, he is compromising now.

And this is enforced by two-thirds of Americans who want him to do that. Now, there's the other question, of course, over who would have gotten the political blame from all this? We ask, who would you blame more if there was a shutdown right now? Americans are generally split on this. Look at that, 49 percent Republicans in Congress, 43 percent Biden and Democrats.

No shock, if you're a Republican, you blame Democrats and vice versa. But independents were 50/50. Basically, both parties had something to lose here. Behind the scenes, I will say Republicans believe that a shutdown would have made their numbers far worse.

Amna Nawaz:

It's heartening to see that support for compromise. And you're seeing some of that compromise moving forward with this plan.

But there were two other events I have to ask you about on Capitol Hill today…

Lisa Desjardins:

Right.

Amna Nawaz:

… that got a lot of attention, really got into physical confrontations. Tell us about that. What happened?

Lisa Desjardins:

Right.

We are at a place where we believe in civil dialogue for all of these serious problems. But today was a sign that some in Congress have been going the other direction.

First, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy on his way to a meeting this morning in a crowded hallway walked by Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, someone who voted to oust him. Burchett says that McCarthy pushed him, shoved him, in fact gave a shot to the kidneys with his elbow and hurt him.

There was an NPR reporter there who noticed something and said she saw a shove. And here is what Tim Burchett told us later about his reaction to this.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN):

I just — it just — it's one of those deals that you don't — you just don't expect that kind of thing from an adult, especially the guy that was at one time the third person in line to the White House.

Lisa Desjardins:

Now, I spoke to former Speaker McCarthy about this. Other reporters did too. He said he doesn't remember any contact. He thinks this is a misunderstanding and that certainly he didn't mean anything, it was an accident.

Burchett feels the other way. Burchett is concerned that McCarthy actually will primary him and that this could be a political problem for him as well. Now, all of that happened. And we weren't sure we were going to talk about that until something else happened today in a Senate committee room.

In this room was the head of the Teamsters, Sean O'Brien, and in front of him was Markwayne Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma, a new senator. These two have a history. They have tweeted at each other, the teamster president kind of saying, you're not — you're a fake tough guy, Markwayne Mullin challenging him to a fight in the past.

But here's what happened when Markwayne Mullin brought up that tweet from the Teamsters president.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK):

Sir, this is a time. This is a place, if you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.

Sean O’Brien, General President, Teamsters:

OK, that's fine. Perfect.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin:

You want to do it now?

Sean O’Brien:

I'd love to do it right now.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin:

Well, stand your butt up then.

Sean O’Brien:

You stand your butt up.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT):

Oh, hold it. Stop it.

(Crosstalk)

Sen. Markwayne Mullin:

Is that your solution to every problem?

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Oh, no, sit down. Sit down.

(Crosstalk)'

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

You're a United States senator.

(Crosstalk)

Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Sit down, please.

Lisa Desjardins:

This would be funny, it'd be a parody if it weren't so serious and we wouldn't have some so many serious problems. Sanders said, listen, we don't need to add more contempt for Congress.

Clearly, there's individual contempt at this point now. I think one of the concerns here is that neither of these men right now is backing down and it seems both may benefit politically, as do others from this atmosphere right now.

Amna Nawaz:

Here's hoping we don't see more of that.

Lisa Desjardins, thank you for your reporting.

Lisa Desjardins:

You're welcome.