The far right is pushing back as Congress begins to press for a spending deal

Congress began an upward push Monday to pass a new, bipartisan spending deal into law in time to avoid a partial government shutdown next week. Speaker Mike Johnson encountered fierce resistance from his far-right flank to the deal he made with the Democrats.

Ultra-conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have panned the $1.66 trillion deal that Mr. Johnson struck with Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, saying it is unacceptable.

The agreement essentially follows on from Congress’ agreement last year to suspend the debt ceiling, which the far right opposed at the time and had hoped to roll back. It also includes $69 billion in spending added as a side deal, money that conservatives tried to block entirely.

“This is a total failure,” the far-right House Freedom Caucus, a group of Republicans who have proven to be a thorn in the side of a series of Republican speakers, wrote on social media.

“I am a NO to Johnson Schumer’s budget deal,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing Republican from Georgia, wrote on social media. “This $1.6 trillion budget deal does nothing to secure the border, stop the invasion, or stop the gun-toting government from targeting Biden’s political enemies and innocent Americans.”

The reaction from the far right once again underlined that Mr Johnson will most likely have to rely on substantial Democratic support to pass the spending bills underpinning the deal. It also raised questions about the feasibility of his plan to try to gain Republican support for spending measures by introducing conservative policy dictates aimed at restricting abortion rights and what Republicans see as “woke” government policies.

Democrats say they will fight the addition of such policy makers. If a large block of Republicans oppose the spending bills, the chairman will either have to drop the policy provisions to secure Democratic support or face a shutdown.

“Democrats will not accept any Republican poison pill policy change,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

The result is that Mr. Johnson finds himself in a predicament similar to the one that led to Kevin McCarthy’s impeachment last fall — overseeing a minuscule majority while facing a possible shutdown of the government and had to make a deal with the Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives. White House, which will certainly provoke opposition and outrage from the far right.

The parallels were not lost on some of his colleagues.

“Are we learning that negotiating with the Democrats in the White House and the narrow-majority Senate is difficult and that you can’t get everything you want no matter who is in the chairman’s office?” Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, wrote on social media.

Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate have so far expressed support for the deal, which also has support from many Republicans in the Senate, where both parties had pushed for even more spending.

“I am encouraged that the speaker and Democratic leaders have laid out a path to complete this year’s spending package,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader. “America faces serious national security challenges, and Congress must act quickly to provide the year-round resources this moment requires.”

The deal, announced Sunday, would see a slight increase in Pentagon spending to $886.3 billion and keep other federal spending essentially steady at $772.7 billion. After the deal closed, the Appropriations Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate went to work crunching the numbers and applying those spending levels to the twelve measures that fund the government.

Four of the bills expire on January 19 and the remaining eight, including legislation funding the Pentagon, would expire on February 2. To even have a chance of meeting the first deadline, the committees will have to operate at warp speed, as the fiscal year actually started on October 1 and not a single bill even came close to passing Congress.

“We now have a framework agreement that allows us to finally begin the hard work of negotiating — and passing — full-year spending bills,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.