House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) finally managed to scrape together the votes to pass the annual defense authorization bill, known as NDAA. But he had to make some key concessions to Republican hardliners — and they’re threatening to raise hell if those promises aren’t kept, Axios reported on Thursday.
If the holdouts perceive Johnson as going back on his word, they could pull out of the next continuing resolution to fund the government, potentially triggering yet another federal government shutdown early next year.
“So we made a deal — and actually we talked to the secretary of state directly,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), one of the holdouts who demanded a deal. “[Our demand] either happens, or a CR goes down. He’s promised to be with us on that.”
Among the concessions Johnson made are to allow a future vote to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks — a longtime bipartisan goal of good-government reformers across the political spectrum — and a future provision that would ban the Federal Reserve from creating its own digital currency, a longtime pet project of far-right activists. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also secured a vote on her own Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would prohibit certain forms of gender-affirming care for minors.
Essential to the deal, per the report, was a separate promise from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to crack down on funding from NGOs to Afghanistan that GOP hardliners believe is going to Taliban leadership.
All of this comes as lawmakers remember the weekslong government shutdown months before as Democrats demanded a solution to expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits. A vote on extending those subsidies is coming, and Republicans are scrambling to introduce their own alternative to the Democratic proposal.
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