Johnson Grovels Before Musk to Save His Stopgap Spending Bill

Mike Johnson really can’t afford opposition from the scariest new force in Washington. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Whether you think of him as Harry Houdini or Mr. Magoo, it’s definitely true that Mike Johnson has escaped all sorts of potentially career-ending disasters in his brief tenure as speaker. His fundamental problem is an extremely narrow margin of control that emboldens conservative ultras in his ranks who would be happy to blow up Washington in pursuit of draconian domestic-spending cuts and MAGA ideological gestures. It’s happening again: A week from Christmas and two days from the expiration of a stopgap spending measure, he’s trying to enact another stopgap bill to keep the federal government operating until Donald Trump and a new Republican-controlled Congress are firmly in place. But the steps he’s having to take (including deals with the Democrats who at present still control the Senate and the White House) to get that done is enraging his right-wing critics more than ever, and they are now being joined by the most fearsome new figure in Washington: Trump “buddy” and co-founder of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk.

In the middle of the night, almost immediately after Johnson’s office released the text of the stopgap bill, Musk went medieval on it:

The reality is that the stopgap bill was never a “clean” continuing resolution that just extended spending until such time as the new administration and Congress could whack it by trillions. With a bunch of House Freedom Caucus types unwilling to vote for any spending bills, Johnson had to reach out to Democrats, whose support would be necessary in any event to get it through the Senate and past Joe Biden’s desk, while placating as many Republicans in both chambers as possible. There was also the unavoidable need for disaster assistance to cover costs incurred during Hurricane Helene, then intense pressure to do something for farmers in the absence of a comprehensive farm bill, and on and on and on. So inevitably the stopgap bill became a legislative Christmas tree, including, among other things, a back-door congressional pay raise. And the more conservatives howled at him, the more deals Johnson had to cut to keep the bill on a course to passage.

So you can kinda sympathize with Johnson’s response to Musk’s insults on Fox News:

“I was communicating with Elon last night,” Johnson said on Fox News on Wednesday morning. “Elon, Vivek [Ramaswamy], and I were on a text chain together, and I was explaining to them the background of this. And Vivek and I talked last night, about almost midnight, and he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ He said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’”

“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans. So any bill has to have Democratic votes,” Johnson said. “They understand the situation. He said, ‘It’s not directed to you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ I said, ‘Guess what, fellas, I don’t either.”

So they’re all on the same page of hating Johnson’s must-pass bill. But it’s possible the speaker of the United States House of Representatives will have to grovel some more before the unelected, unofficial, purely advisory edgelords of DOGE to keep a revolt against his handiwork from spreading throughout MAGA-land and inspiring more Republican defections in Congress. Or maybe he’ll go directly to the president-elect for cover. We’ve all been told that absolutely nobody in Washington wants a holiday season government shutdown, which is what would occur if Musk’s expressed hope is realized and the bill is defeated. So somehow Mike Johnson has to get through yet another spending-bill crisis with no margin for error.

And aside from whatever promises Johnson is making to House Republicans, DOGE leadership, and assorted conservative social-media influencers to keep this from all blowing up, there’s the strong possibility that his reelection as speaker when the new Congress convenes on January 3 could be in danger. Between a diminished House majority of 220 to 215 seats and the vacancies Trump has created through appointments, his margin for error has shrunk to near nothing. And the weakness he’s displaying in struggling to pass this increasingly unpopular and absolutely essential legislation will only draw more sharks to the murky waters he must navigate going forward.