The Senate GOP debate over potential rules changes for the next Congress continues to heat up, with Sens. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealing their latest proposals on the amendment process in a letter sent to fellow Republicans on Thursday.

The letter, obtained by POLITICO, comes as GOP senators are hoping to take back the majority this November — and weighing who to elect as their next leader between Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Proposed rules changes have become a central factor in the race, with a number of rank-and-file GOP senators debuting similar rule-change proposals in recent months.

“I’m talking to people who are running, just sort of opening up this process, and I think there’s a bubbling up among members” of discontent over the Senate’s current amendments process, Schmitt told POLITICO.

The duo’s proposals would allow senators broader access to offering amendments on legislation, a desire many Republicans have echoed in recent years. They broke down their asks into three points:

Allowing any senator who wishes to make an amendment on a piece of legislation to do so: “Let the cards fall where they may. We all came to the Senate expecting to take tough votes, and it is antithetical to this body to have Senators vote on something they had no opportunity to effect on the floor,” they wrote. 

Adopting a GOP conference rule that will order members to block procedural votes to advance a bill — also known as cloture — if senators are unable to offer amendments to it. 

Ensuring the amendment “tree” is not clogged up, and “committing each of us to also not reflexively objecting to amendments from our colleagues.”

The proposed blanket blocks on advancing bills that do not have an open amendment process could be tricky with legislation like government funding, which come with built-in deadlines. But Schmitt said he views it as a matter of scheduling — and argued collaborating on amendments ahead of time could ease the flow.
Many amendments stack up until the last moments on pieces of legislation, causing delays in passage.

“I think if we actually were committed to being here and working like you have plenty of time to do all this stuff,” Schmitt said. “You could set aside an entire afternoon and into the evening to work through a lot of amendments. The problem is we don’t do any of that.”

Grassley added in a statement: “Our Founders did not intend this body to act as a rubber stamp. We in the Senate ought to return to regular order and start living up to the obligations assigned to us in the Constitution.”

The powerful House Freedom Caucus seems to have narrowed the search for its next leader to two main candidates: Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) or Andy Harris (R-Md.), according to two members of the group and two people familiar with the discussions.

The ultra-conservative group’s internal wrangling was necessary after current Chair Bob Good (R-Va.) told members during a closed-door meeting on Monday that his resignation would be official at the end of this week.

The group’s discussion about who should be Good’s successor is still actively in flux, but the board wants to have a name to submit on Friday. The full group would then sign off next week.

The House Freedom Caucus has been a near-constant problem for GOP leadership, frequently tanking spending bills and demanding certain legislative priorities that aren’t always backed by more centrist members, or even more governing-minded conservatives. Some members act independently of the group’s leadership, but whoever assumes the role will likely negotiate with Republican leaders directly.

Harris is a fiscal hawk that has previously expressed interest in leading the group. Meanwhile, Biggs, who has been more of a perennial headache for House GOP leadership, is viewed as a leading contender if the group purely wants a caretaker who could get them through the end of the year.

“I think either Andy would be great. Andy Biggs did a great job. Andy Harris is a great guy. I think they would both be good. I don’t know who is going to win,” one of the Freedom Caucus members, granted anonymity to discuss internal matters, said about the internal race in a brief interview.

Asked about the race, a Freedom Caucus spokesperson said “HFC does not comment on membership or internal processes.”

Good became the first Freedom Caucus chair to lose his primary election in June — throwing the group into uncharted waters when his loss was solidified in a recount last month. His term as chair was scheduled to run through 2025, so his loss meant he would have to step down early. He opted to do it this week, rather than run out the clock through the rest of the year.

In addition to Biggs, Freedom Caucus members also initially floated Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), another former chair, as a temporary leader to get them through the end of the year. But he has a tougher reelection than Biggs, who is in a deep-red district, so Biggs eventually emerged as the leading preference if the group went down that route.

Harris, however, is seen as a candidate who they would pick to lead the group for a longer period of time. He’s on the group’s board and has previously expressed interest in leading the group.

Freedom Caucus members have been privately discussing for weeks how to move forward after Good’s election loss. Many in the group did not want their internal election to coincide with the presidential election — typically, the chair selection process is held in off-election years. That led to member discussions about a temporary replacement, so they could have a longer-term chair election early next year. Even if they pick Harris next week, another election early next year is still under discussion.

And a third Andy in the Freedom Caucus — Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) — also isn’t ruling out that he’ll throw his name into the mix whenever the group holds an election for a full term.

“We’ll see. … It’s been talked about ” Ogles said.

Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.

With the House stuck (again) on a government funding plan and a possible government shutdown approaching on Oct. 1, lawmakers spent Wednesday working through possible Plan Bs as the clock ticks away.

What the House GOP is thinking: House Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders are still hoping to vote next week on a continuing resolution that would run through March 28 and include legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. But even if Republican leaders manage to sway a significant number of GOP holdouts and pass the measure — in what would amount to a badly needed win on spending — Senate Democrats will reject it and President Joe Biden won’t sign it.

House Republican appropriators are now quietly discussing the merits of a shorter CR, running into December, with the voting legislation, known as the SAVE Act, still attached. Doing so, the thinking goes, might pick up more votes — possibly even from the five Democrats who supported the SAVE Act earlier this summer (who might open themselves to campaign-trail attacks if they vote “nay”).

“Is that a viable option with a few anomalies? I don’t know,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a senior appropriator. “I sure would like to try that, because there were some Democrats that were for SAVE — five or so — that didn’t like the length of the CR. So if you back the CR up into December, keep SAVE with it, where does that shake out?”

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who favors trying to wrap up fiscal 2025 appropriations by December, stressed Wednesday afternoon that the next steps are solely up to Johnson: “We’re obviously prepared to negotiate at any point, but it depends on what the speaker wants to do next.”

What House Democrats are thinking: Democrats say they’re happy to watch House Republicans flail for now. Eventually, they believe, Johnson will have to bless bipartisan negotiations among top House and Senate appropriators — which would likely result in a mid-December CR that would not include the SAVE Act or other divisive policy add-ons.

Negotiators would still need to hash out a number of extra funding boosts (aka “anomalies”) for parts of the government that can’t run on autopilot through the end of the year.

“For the good of the American people, Congress must move on from House Republicans’ partisan continuing resolution proposals and begin negotiating a funding bill that can earn the support of both Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democratic appropriator in the House, said Wednesday.

What the Senate is thinking: Senate appropriators are working on their own fallback plan to fund the government through Dec. 13, according to a source familiar with the discussions, although the drafting of that measure isn’t complete.

While both Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) agree on the merits of a shorter stopgap, with the goal of closing out fiscal 2024 funding talks by the end of the year, what’s less clear is how quickly the Senate could act unilaterally to take up a House bill, amend it and send it back across the Capitol for passage.

“Regardless, we’re going to have a new administration,” Collins said. “And I would think it would be preferable to give them a clean slate so that its officials can concentrate on the next year’s budget, rather than having to deal with complex issues for a fiscal year that began October 1.”

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

House GOP leaders pulled their six-month stopgap funding plan on Wednesday, hours before a scheduled floor vote.

Facing a number of Republican holdouts, Speaker Mike Johnson said they’ll delay the vote until next week as they work to quell Republican opposition and “build consensus.”

“We are going to continue to work on this. The whip is going to do the hard work to build consensus and work on the weekend on that,” Johnson said, noting they are having “family conversations” about it.

The measure has crumbled amid mounting criticism from conservatives, defense hawks and other Republican factions, and it’s unclear that more time will help save the bill unless leaders make drastic changes. House GOP leaders have been already been whipping the bill, and nearly a dozen Republicans have publicly said they plan to vote against it. The package would fund the government through March 28 and is combined with legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, known as the SAVE Act.

While a government shutdown at month’s end is still unlikely and unwanted by congressional leaders, it’s the latest episode of Johnson’s repeated struggles this year to muster enough support to pass GOP spending bills, thanks to many of the same problems currently plaguing his conference.

Johnson and GOP leaders have indicated they don’t have a fallback plan to stave off a government shutdown that would hit in less than three weeks. The speaker continued pushing for the SAVE Act on Wednesday, even as he announced the vote delay.

“I want any member of Congress — in either party — to explain to the American people why we should not ensure that only US citizens are voting in US elections,” Johnson said.

Unless they can find adjustments to placate detractors, there’s an increasing likelihood that House Republicans will wind up saddled with a three-month stopgap spending bill backed by Democrats and the White House, free of any divisive policy add-ons. The Democratic-controlled Senate has not yet put forth its own official bill to keep the government open.

“I think, one way or the other, we’re in the business of at least having a December deadline,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) acknowledged in a brief interview. “It doesn’t mean it couldn’t be extended at that point.”

While five House Democrats supported passage of the SAVE Act earlier this summer, those lawmakers haven’t felt pressured to back Johnson’s proposal and make up for GOP defections now that it’s attached to the spending plan. Some conservatives, spurred on by former President Donald Trump, are pushing for a shutdown if the proof-of-citizenship legislation ultimately isn’t attached to a bill to keep the government open. But that isn’t a widely held view, as many Republicans are loath to flirt with a shutdown just weeks before an election.

Republican defense hawks, meanwhile, say it would be irresponsible to flat fund the military for six months, while top GOP appropriators in both chambers argue that Congress should finish its work on fiscal 2024 funding before the end of the calendar year, offering a fresh start for a new administration and the next Congress.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who oversees the Pentagon’s budget, said Congress is likely headed for a “clean” three-month funding fix and that it would be detrimental to operate the Defense Department on autopilot into March.

“We’ll have to have a defense appropriation bill sooner than that. You can’t run the largest enterprise in the world on a CR,” Calvert said of the six-month continuing resolution GOP leaders scrapped.

Any solution to staving off a shutdown on Oct. 1 must ultimately be bipartisan, noted Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas, the Republican who oversees transportation funding, since it would require support from Senate Democrats and the White House.

The Biden administration is pushing for a spending patch through December, giving Congress time to wrap up negotiations on government funding after the election. The White House is also calling for tens of billions of dollars in additional disaster relief, funding for veterans’ health care and benefits, food assistance for women, infants and children and money for the Social Security Administration to deal with staffing and outreach issues.

“The Senate is the Senate. And whatever we do, we gotta get through the Senate, and it’s got to get signed,” Womack said. “So when you add it all up, you kind of smell a clean CR coming, or something like that.”

The House’s top Democratic appropriator, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, said whatever final stopgap funding patch Congress ends up clearing this month will need to include billions of dollars in extra disaster aid and funding to fill a budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs. And to hatch a bipartisan compromise, negotiations will need to begin among top appropriators and Congress’ four leaders, she added.

“Bring in the four corners. This is a one-corner deal,” DeLauro said of Johnson’s pulled plan.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s government funding plan, a six-month temporary government funding bill with new proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration, is set for a full House vote on Wednesday.

But there are a lot of roadblocks here, and there’s still a possibility that leaders yank it before it comes to the floor.

State of play: The measure can’t clear the House with only GOP votes given current levels of opposition. Nearly a dozen House Republicans are on the record saying they’ll vote against the speaker’s proposal.

And Democrats are unlikely to help, viewing the voting provision as a poison pill. Only one House Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), has indicated he’ll vote for it.

But Johnson is still forging ahead as planned. On Tuesday night, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) was hospitalized in Washington after he suffered “stroke-like symptoms,” further shrinking Johnson’s margin for defections.

When asked Tuesday if he’d consider putting a “clean” stopgap spending bill up for a vote, without the voter registration language, Johnson kept his options open.

“I am not going to engage in conjecture or game out all the outcomes,” he told reporters.

Former President Donald Trump weighed in Tuesday to urge House Republicans to hold strong on the election provisions.

“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION” Trump wrote on social media.

House Democrats are still corralling votes on the stopgap funding and election legislation bundle, but they’re signaling they’ll take a wait-and-see approach as opposition builds on the right.

“We are still finalizing our whip count, but I think the problem is on the Republican side, because their own conference is recognizing this bill is bad for veterans, bad for seniors, bad for the American people,” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) said in a brief interview. “And so we’ll see what they do with their votes for their own partisan bill.”

Five Democrats voted for the proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration when the legislation came up earlier this year, but only one of them, Golden, has publicly said he would vote for the combined legislation this time around. Others like Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) have indicated they are likely to oppose it.

Even if House Republicans can muster the votes to pass the short-term spending measure with the election language attached, it has no chance in the Democratic Senate. In both chambers, Democrats are against inclusion of the so-called SAVE Act, citing the fact that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to register to vote in federal elections.

There are just 19 days until government funding runs dry.

Senate Democrats have lambasted Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending plan as partisan showboating, but they’re sticking to a wait-and-see approach before moving on any alternative proposal ahead of an end-of-month government shutdown deadline.

The potential for a shutdown remains low. And it’s unclear if Democratic senators will put forward their own stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution or a CR, or wait for an attempt from the House that they can amend.

What is clear: House Republicans are having difficulties with their stopgap plan, which kicks the shutdown deadline into March and includes a bill that requires proof to citizenship to register to vote.

“We may,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said, when asked whether Senate Democrats will introduce their own rendition of the bill. “We can’t have a shutdown. That just is unacceptable.”

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Senate Democrats “are prepared to take a clean [continuing resolution] and move forward with it.” Democrats and some Republicans have advocated for a stopgap spending bill that kicks the shutdown deadline into mid-December.

“They want to engage in politics at the moment, I think that’s unfortunate, and it won’t pay off in the long run,” Durbin added.

Democrats have a particular problem with the House GOP’s attempt to include the SAVE Act as part of the bill, which would bar non-citizens from registering to vote in federal elections, which is already illegal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated Tuesday that he will only take up legislation that is “free of poison pills” and said he is prepared to negotiate with House Republicans on a deal.

Some Senate Republicans have indicated they’d be on board with a stopgap bill that punts the shutdown deadline to later this year, rather than into March. Lead GOP appropriator Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she prefers a bill that goes only until December, as did Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he thinks the “shorter the period the better.”

Senate Democrats need the support of at least nine Republicans to pass a spending bill through their chamber. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO “there are a lot of grown ups in the Senate” who he expects can find a bipartisan solution.

Durbin noted the House’s underlying spending language isn’t far off from the Senate’s and that the chambers are “close in terms of the substance, beyond the political issues.” Johnson is also seeking a six-month stopgap, which Senate Democrats have dubbed a non-starter as well.

“We’re not doing six months,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said bluntly on Tuesday.

Johnson has repeatedly claimed he has no backup plan for his version of the funding bill, which the House is slated to vote on Wednesday, despite resistance from both House Republicans and Democrats alike. What’s more, former President Donald Trump on Tuesday posted on social media that congressional Republicans should “in no way, shape, or form go forward” with a continuing resolution without “absolute assurances on election security.”

Still, neither party is eager to trigger a government shutdown just weeks before an election, so no alarms are going off yet. Not only would it create a political blame-game, but it’d keep members in town during the upcoming October recess, when lawmakers up for reelection are eager to campaign.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday said his chamber would “have to see what the House sends us” when asked if he agreed with Johnson’s strategy. But, he added, “I think we don’t know right now” what it will look like.

“The speaker’s got a tough job. Whatever he gets out of the House would be our base product,” Graham said.

Government funding runs out on Sept. 30 and Congress is currently slated to be in town only through Sept. 27.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.