To prevent a shutdown, Democrats do the heavy lifting (again)

There were two reasons many feared a partial government shutdown this week. The first is that Congress didn’t have time to complete difficult work on pending appropriations bills, and the second was that Republican leaders said they had no intention of approving another stopgap spending measure.

Something had to give. In this instance, it was House GOP leaders abandoning their earlier opposition to a temporary spending bill. NBC News reported:

Lawmakers are, of course, still dealing with the bifurcated model House Speaker Mike Johnson prefers. With this in mind, Congress will now have until March 8 — one week from today — to approve six pending appropriations bills. The new deadline for the remaining spending measures is March 22.

At that point, the House and Senate can get to work focusing on the next fiscal year.

But before the political world moves on, it’s worth taking a look at the vote tallies on the short-term funding bill (called a “continuing resolution,” or “CR”). At a Capitol Hill press conference after the measure cleared the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries took a moment to remind his Republican colleagues of a detail they probably found inconvenient.

“Once again,” the New York Democrat said, “Democrats have demonstrated our willingness to work together, do the right thing by the American people and provide the overwhelming majority of votes necessary to get things done.”

Jeffries had a point. The final tally in the Democratic-led Senate was 77 to 13, with far-right GOP senators voting in opposition, but the vote in the Republican-led House was even more interesting: The bill passed 320 to 99, with Democrats providing 207 of the votes needed to advance the legislation.

In other words, it’s Republicans who control the chamber, and it was Republican leaders who agreed to the terms to avoid the shutdown they threatened, but it was members of the Democratic minority that provided nearly two-thirds of the votes needed to pass the bill.

This legislative dynamic — Republicans relying on Democrats to govern — happens a lot more than GOP leaders like to admit.

About a month ago, for example, the House considered a bipartisan compromise on tax policy, which was endorsed by the House Republican leadership. It was nevertheless Democrats who provided most of the votes to pass it.

Two weeks earlier, a bill to prevent a partial government shutdown cleared the House with 314 votes, but roughly two-thirds of those votes came from the House Democratic minority.

The circumstances are becoming routine. Last September, to prevent a government shutdown, it was Democrats who provided most of the votes. Two months later, again to prevent a government shutdown, Republicans also relied on Democratic votes.

During the mid-November debate on that bill, Democratic Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois joked during floor remarks, “Next week, Americans will gather around their dinner tables and share what they’re thankful for. I hope my Republican colleagues will use that moment to reflect on how lucky you are to work with us House Democrats.”

A month later, when the House needed to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Democrats again provided a majority of the votes.

And when Republicans threatened to crash the economy on purpose by leveraging the debt ceiling, it was — you guessed it — Democrats who cast most of the votes to pass the bipartisan solution.

As 2023 came to an end, Axios highlighted the underappreciated pattern: “Republicans may hold the House majority, but Democratic yeas outnumbered GOP votes on every major bill that landed on President Biden’s desk this year.”

As 2024 advances, the pattern continues.

When John Boehner was a Republican House speaker, he too found himself dependent on Democrats when his far-right members didn’t want to govern. During Paul Ryan’s tenure, it happened some more. When Kevin McCarthy did the same thing, it contributed to the intraparty revolt that cost him his gavel.

And now, here we are, watching Speaker Johnson do the same thing.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.