This morning while I was reading emails at work I noticed that Speaker Johnson was on Squawk Box this morning. Given that ya know I am still coming to work and not getting paid I unmuted the TV to see what he had to say about what was going on and possibly gain some sort of insight. What I saw impressed the hell out of me.
As we all know the House has been out of session in a "district work week" mode for several weeks now. Initially it was just the Democrats and people on the left who was complaining about this but the idea and reason this has been done is very straight forward. You apply pressure to the Senate minority members to pressure them into taking the deal that the House had passed. However, as we have now been out of session for several weeks straight some Republicans and those on the right are starting to discuss about going back into session and working on additional legislation.
Minority Leaders Schumer and Jeffries have pounced on this development to say that Republican Leaders and Democratic Leaders need to meet with President Trump to get a deal done. In a typical DC world no one would think twice about this but for once we are seeing a change.
When this topic came up the normally even keeled Speaker Johnson started to get really really fired up. He made it clear that he refused to cut backroom deals and hammered home how the people are sick of DC politicians cutting these deals and he would not be part of them. He doubled down going what do they want me to give them I have them a non partisan clean CR and they want to add stuff making it partisan.
For me this was a remarkable shift as Speaker Johnson normally is the calm, cool, calculated person. This time though he was really getting rev'd up and was ready to pounce at. He is also right in that bringing the House back will not end up doing anything for anyone. So many part of the government are shutdown that the staff needed for people to testify have been furloughed in many cases. Andrew Sorkin commented "dont you want them to have to take the hard votes" to which Speaker Johnson replied the hard vote already happened they voted to not fund the government and to shut it down but we were still able to get it passed and sent to the Senate.
The only reason the House will come back into session if the CR is not passed by the Senate is to vote on another CR that moves the funding deadline from November 21 to either January or even September of 2026. Otherwise... there is not really a reason for all the Members to be here. Even setting up hearings has been sidelined as, at least on my Committee, the invitations for witnesses go out two weeks in advance. The latest we have ever sent one was 9 days before hand when we had to swap someone out since they could no longer attend.