Speaker Mike Johnson announced plans to pursue legislation next week that would repeal a Senate provision in a major spending package that incensed House Republicans and threatened to prolong the partial government shutdown.
The must-pass spending measure drew eleventh-hour objections from House members of both parties after the discovery in recent days of a provision that would allow senators to sue for at least $500,000 each when federal investigators search their phone records in a judicially sanctioned probe without notifying them.
It would also apply retroactively, meaning at least 10 senators whose records were searched by former special counsel John L. “Jack” Smith in his probe of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol would automatically be entitled to big payouts.
Republican members of the House Rules Committee, at a hearing that stretched into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, expressed consternation over the provision, which applies only to senators. While they vowed to find a way to change or eliminate the provision, several GOP members said they were not prepared to do so by derailing the package needed to end the shutdown.
[Related: Senate payouts unnerve some in House GOP on eve of shutdown vote]
Johnson’s new commitment to address the concern, announced on the social platform X, appeared likely to clear the way for Republicans to vote for the spending package.
“We are putting this legislation on the fast track suspension calendar in the House for next week,” the Louisiana Republican said. Passage through suspension of the rules would require a two-thirds majority vote, which appeared within reach because of bipartisan opposition to the Senate provision.
Johnson said he had not been aware that the Senate provision was slipped into the spending package.
“I found out about it last night,” he told reporters. “I was surprised. I was shocked by it and I was angry about it.”
But the fate of the stand-alone measure in the Senate was anything but certain. Republican senators were furious to learn that Smith had subpoenaed their phone records in 2023 without their knowledge. Smith, through attorneys, has defended the search as a lawful attempt to pro