THE SPEAKER’S NEW MATH In less than a month, Speaker Mike Johnson is set to watch his control of the House shrink to a size last seen a century ago. Once Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) leaves office, which is expected to happen April 19, the speaker will only be able to lose one person from his side on any given floor vote, assuming full House attendance and no Democratic crossovers. But here’s the more complicated reality: Johnson’s one-vote margin won’t always matter a lot. In some ways, his new reality will look a lot like his current one with a two-vote cushion. The amount of peril he’ll face will depend on the situation the Louisiana Republican is trying to navigate. So let’s start with when it matters: Johnson’s biggest problem will be on a potential vote to oust him. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) hasn’t yet said when she might force a vote on firing Johnson. Some Republicans have brushed off her Friday filing of the so-called motion to vacate the speaker’s chair as an empty threat. But Johnson’s path to survival will be especially rocky if Greene decides to force that vote between April 19 and mid-June — when an Ohio special election is expected to bump up his margin, bringing him back to two votes to spare. While no other Republican has publicly endorsed Greene’s effort yet, she claims silent supporters and several Johnson critics are on the fence for now. If the current two-week recess leads to more anger building up among fellow conservatives, Greene might only need one ally to take out Johnson. (Of course, that’s assuming that no Democrat votes to prevent another round of speakerless chaos; several have already made clear they would save Johnson’s job if he calls a vote on Ukraine aid, a price that may prove too high.) Beyond the motion to vacate, Johnson will likely feel his smaller margin most frequently on a once-routine step that has become one of the House GOP’s biggest headaches: votes on rules for floor debate. Multiple factions of the Republican conference — most notably conservative hardliners, though they’re not alone — have stopped or threatened to stop floor action on bills under a rule. In some cases, those GOP rebellions have erupted after Johnson cut unrelated deals with Democrats. Either way, it’s a huge problem for the speaker and underscores the difficulty of getting any legislation to the floor or through the Rules Committee, where conservatives control three of the nine GOP seats under a deal cut by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Look for this dynamic to reappear early next month, when Johnson has said he will reconsider reauthorization of a controversial warrantless spy power known as Section 702 that badly divides his conference. The one-vote margin could also affect fiscal year 2025 funding bills, depending on when they start coming to the floor, and any GOP budget debate. Now let’s look at when the one-vote margin won’t matter: It will become less of an existential crisis when he can bet on help from Democrats, whether that’s to save his speakership or to pass bipartisan deals that his right flank hates. Johnson can probably count on at least some Democratic votes if he puts a foreign aid package on the floor that resembles the bipartisan Senate-passed package. But if he crafts a bill meant to jam Democrats, like the standalone Israel aid bill that he previously put on the floor, he shouldn’t count on them to help out the way they have on many other big votes. To recap for readers who aren’t House rules nerds: Democrats have been more than happy to put up a significant chunk of the votes needed to pass deals negotiated with the Senate and White House — including on last year’s defense policy bill, the McCarthy-era budget deal and last week’s government funding package. That helps Johnson by letting him rely on the “suspension calendar,” which lets him bypass the need to send bills through the Rules Committee to set parameters for debate. To pass that way, though, legislation needs a two-thirds majority of the House. That means Democrats have effective veto power over what he can pass under suspension. In fact, some Democrats have taken to proudly noting that they can’t remember the last time the minority party had to carry the majority with its votes. So even though using the suspension calendar will make Johnson’s one-vote majority matter less, he might end up using it less to avoid more anger among his own. – Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu and Olivia Beavers
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