As Spending Talks Intensify, Johnson’s Bind Grows Tighter

At an intense meeting inside the Oval Office on Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson was the odd man out.

President Biden made clear that the speaker’s positions were out of step with other leaders in government, as did Vice President Kamala Harris. The top Democrats in the House and Senate did, too. Even Senator Mitch McConnell, his fellow G.O.P. leader on the other side of the Capitol, emphasized the need for the speaker to avoid a government shutdown and provide badly needed aid to Ukraine.

With time running out to respond to two crises — a partial government shutdown that is looming this weekend and the potential end to American aid to help Ukraine prevail in its war against Russia — Mr. Johnson, only months into his job, has found himself the last holdout at an increasingly agitated table of negotiators.

On the one side, he is feeling pressure from the president of the United States, both Senate leaders and the House minority leader — all demanding he cut a deal to fund the government and keep aid to Kyiv flowing. But on his right flank, he is facing a band of hard-line Republicans demanding that he hold out for conservative priorities and spurn Ukraine’s calls for help, or risk being booted from the speakership.

To put it succinctly, Mr. Johnson is in a bind.

“Boy, is it a tough one,” said former Representative Vin Weber, Republican of Minnesota, who helped advise Kevin McCarthy during his lengthy bid to secure the gavel. “There is not a solution that will make everyone happy and unite the Republican Party.”

Mr. Weber said the pressures on Mr. Johnson were coming not just from members of Congress, but also from a Republican electorate at war with itself.

“He has a divided Republican grass-roots base,” Mr. Weber said. “Isolationism has spread among the grass-roots base, but there’s also a lot of grass-roots Republicans who will be furious if we let the Russians win. He’s got problems multiple ways. But he’s got to figure out the right thing to do and do it. It may cost him his speakership.”

Mr. Johnson views himself as the last man in the room standing for conservative priorities, even as he has acknowledged he has scaled down some of the demands of the hard right. He has said he is hoping to hit singles and not home runs during the negotiations.

On the spending bills, Mr. Johnson is accusing Democrats of trying to make the legislation more liberal during negotiations. He is attempting to hold the line for conservatives on such matters as limiting spending on food stamps for the poor and eliminating funding for a firearms background check for some veterans who have been deemed mentally incompetent — even as he has abandoned other sweeping demands.

On funding for Ukraine, Mr. Johnson is insisting that the Biden administration first crack down on migration across the United States border with Mexico before he will agree to bring up a bill to provide more foreign aid. He is attuned to polls that show securing the border is a top priority of many Americans.

But it is a lonely task, with the rest of the power players in Washington arrayed against him. That was plain at the meeting at the White House on Tuesday, which participants described as a heated ganging-up on Mr. Johnson, first at the hands of Mr. Biden and the three other congressional leaders, and then in a brief one-on-one talk with the president.

“We said to the speaker, ‘Get it done,’” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the Senate, said of the Oval Office meeting, referring to the aid package for Ukraine. “History is looking over your shoulder. And if you don’t do the right thing, whatever the immediate politics are, you will regret it.”

In some ways, the jam in which Mr. Johnson finds himself is outside of his control. He is holding a weak hand. His party controls only one-half of one branch of government — with Democrats in charge of the White House and Senate — and the Republicans in his chamber have often proved themselves unruly and ungovernable.

On top of that, Mr. Johnson is operating under rules agreed to by his predecessor, Mr. McCarthy, that significantly weakened the speakership. The Rules Committee, through which most bills must pass before coming to the floor, is stacked with ultraconservatives, and any single member can make a so-called motion to vacate that would prompt a snap vote to remove him — the fate that befell Mr. McCarthy.

But Mr. Johnson has also made decisions that have contributed to his problems. He has allowed himself, at times, to become more of a follower than a leader, and he has drawn red lines — like pledging never again to agree to a short-term spending measure — only to be forced to cross them when he had no other option to avoid a shutdown.

When faced with tough decisions, such as how to overhaul an expiring warrantless surveillance program or how to get contentious spending bills passed, Mr. Johnson has often chosen to delay choosing what to do. Like a beleaguered football coach out of good options, he has frequently returned to the refuge of the punt.

“We’ve now tested almost to destruction the theory that the speakership can be an excessively collaborative model, where you let everyone weigh in and follow the prevailing whim,” said Mike Ricci, a former top communications aide to the Republican speakers Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and John A. Boehner of Ohio. “It was obvious from the beginning there weren’t going to be huge policy wins here. The worst thing you can do is overpromise and underdeliver, and he keeps getting walked into that buzz saw.”

But House Republicans — both those on the hard right and more mainstream members — often demand to have a speaker who will fight. Many times members will accept a piece of compromise legislation, but only after a leader has put up a significant battle.

“Speaker Johnson is a man of character and tries to get the pulse of the conference before acting,” said Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, who represents a seat won by Mr. Biden and sees Mr. Johnson as fighting for the Republican agenda. “I think great policy is great politics. He ran on securing the border, but also helping Ukraine and Israel, and he opposed government shutdowns. I supported his initial agenda and I think that it is still right.”

As Mr. Johnson stayed behind with Mr. Biden on Tuesday after the rest of the congressional leaders had departed, Democrats stood in the driveway outside, railing against the speaker’s position.

“We made it clear to him we can’t tarry or the war could be lost,” Mr. Schumer told reporters, adding: “He can’t say, ‘I won’t do Ukraine until we get border.’ He’s tried to do border for six months and couldn’t come up with a single Democratic vote.”

After that, it was Mr. Johnson’s turn to address reporters.

He said he was “very optimistic” about avoiding a shutdown, which he called “our first responsibility,” but also insisted that he would not bend on aid to Ukraine until the border was secure.

“It’s time for action,” he said. “It’s a catastrophe and it must stop.”

Then Mr. Johnson walked away from the microphones by himself.