House Republicans grow anxious about Speaker Johnson's extended shutdown recess

House Republicans are growing anxious about how they will make up for lost time after Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) move to keep the House out of session for more than a month during the government shutdown, with leaders starting to brace members for long days when the funding impasse eventually ends.

Frustrations with the lack of action in the House spilled out into the open on a House GOP conference call on Tuesday, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has previously publicly criticized the recess strategy, again confronted Johnson on how he was handling the shutdown.

But the concerns were also raised by members like Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a source confirmed and Axios previously reported, who questioned how lawmakers will make up for lost time.

The House last voted on Sept. 19. It’s the longest break in a House session since a six-week recess ahead of the 2024 election — and an unscheduled one.

Johnson has canceled five weeks of previously scheduled votes as he aims to put pressure on Senate Democrats, who are demanding negotiations on expiring enhanced ObamaCare subsidies, to accept a House-passed, Republican-crafted “clean” continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 21.

Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) told reporters this week that she “of course” likes being able to spend more time in her district, and that members are still working on committee business and other issues while the House is out, but “we are all built to work here.”

One House Republican familiar with leadership conversations said that members should brace for a jam-packed schedule when the chamber returns — likening it to “two-a-day” football practices.

“It’s not going to be business as usual. It’s going to be long nights, long days,” the GOP member said.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said that he would meet with Johnson on Thursday about all the work left to do on appropriations bills when the shutdown ends. All 12 appropriations bills have cleared committee, but only a few have hit the House floor.

“We're just going to have to hit the accelerator,” Cole told The Hill in an interview on Thursday, adding that he would meet with the Speaker on appropriations later in the afternoon.

Cole said that there hasn’t been much negotiation with Democrats on the details of spending bills during the shutdown, accusing Democratic leaders of keeping their members from working on spending bills in earnest during the shutdown. For that reason, he did not think that being in session during the shutdown would have made a difference in how much work the Appropriations Committee will have to do when it ends, unlike other committees.

But Cole is seeking more guidance from leadership in both parties and chambers on sequencing for those bills and whether appropriations or party leaders would negotiate the topline.

“We've got to move and we're wasting a lot of time,” Cole said.

While the Speaker insists that keeping the House out is not a “strategy” and argues that there is nothing else for the House to be working on while the government is shut down, members and staff privately say there is plenty of work that could be done inside the building. 

Some members lament that leaders have not only blocked floor votes, but kept committees from holding hearings and markups during the shutdown.

But they also acknowledge that Johnson’s move to keep members from voting also avoids the headache of having vocal, attention-seeking members distract from the shutdown message — and also discourages more moderate members working without the blessing of leadership to strike a deal with Democrats on the health care subsidy issue.

And by declining to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) while the House is out of session, Johnson also avoids the problem of a discharge petition getting enough signatures to force a vote on releasing the “Epstein Files” — though he contends the swearing-in delay has nothing to do with the petition.

Johnson, while lamenting that the weekly House GOP conference calls are routinely leaked to reporters, said in a press conference on Wednesday that there are only about “three to four members of the House Republican Conference who have only mildly questioned working in the districts as opposed to being here on the floor.”

“I can tell you that 99 percent of all the Republicans in the Senate and the House heartily agree with what we are doing,” Johnson said.

Johnson has pointed to work being done by the committees amid the shutdown, such as the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee releasing more transcripts and documents from its investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He noted that the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on a bipartisan basis, also requested a briefing from NBA Commissioner to Adam Silver on the basketball league’s players and coaches being indicted on charges relating to sports fixing and illegal gambling.

Consensus is also growing that the Nov. 21 stopgap end-date will have to be pushed back once lawmakers find a resolution to the government shutdown, with the Republican familiar with leadership discussions saying end of January or early February looks most likely.

Some members of the House Freedom Caucus and beyond have floated another long-term continuing resolution extending through the end of the fiscal year, or even December 2026.

Cole said he is “adamantly opposed” to that kind of long-term CR, but that an end-of-January CR “sounds reasonable to me.” 

He added that the bipartisan Appropriations Committee leaders believe “once we're allowed to negotiate, we can get these bills done. We've done it before.”   

“If there's any silver lining in this, they'll probably be even more of a sense of urgency to get stuff done,” Cole said.