House Speaker Johnson withdraws government funding bill after Republican support collapses

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday canceled a scheduled vote on a stopgap funding bill that would have kept the government running for the next six months after more than a dozen of his Republican colleagues withdrew their support for the bill.

“We’ll be working on this all weekend,” said Johnson, R-La.

“There is no vote today because we are narrowly trying to reach consensus here in Congress,” he said.

The speaker and other leading Republicans in Congress expected up to 15 defections from the GOP faction that is considering the bill, NBC News reported. On Monday, only two Republicans had announced they would vote against the bill.

The spending proposal would have funded the government through next March, but it would also include the so-called SAVE Act, a law that would require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

Democrats in Congress have announced that they will vote against any spending plan that accompanies the SAVE Act, meaning the bill would be doomed to fail in the Democratic-dominated Senate.

Former President Donald Trump has said Republicans should not pass a budget that is not tied to the SAVE Act. The Republican presidential candidate also said Republicans should be prepared to shut down the government if the voter ID proposal is not included in the budget bill.

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