GOP hardliners are preventing a spending stopgap

The Failure of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to Vote on a Causal Senate Appropriations Bill in the Pre-Shutdown Era

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced the plan to vote on the bill after a morning meeting with House Republicans. McCarthy has refused for weeks to consider any spending bill that would require the support of Democrats. But, facing the potential for a politically and economically harmful shutdown, McCarthy reversed course, specifically calling on Democrats for help passing the bill.

The failure is the latest display of the dysfunction that has engulfed Congress in the days and weeks leading up to an increasingly inevitable government shutdown. House Republicans are at odds with Democrats and most Republicans in the Senate due to internal battles about spending and political tactics.

The Senate is working on its own bipartisan bill to avert any shutdown, but still has procedural steps to get through and the chamber may not vote before a shutdown begins.

At a press conference before the vote McCarthy downplayed internal divisions and essentially dared fellow Republicans to follow through on their threat to block it. Every member will have to take a record of where they are. They either want to secure the border or vote against a measure to keep the government open.

But going into the vote there were already a block of hardliners who said they wouldn’t approve any short term bill, many of them demanding that Congress complete action on all 12 spending bills. The GOP members voted against it.

Conservatives pushed back against the stopgap bill. Bob Good told reporters that he would not vote against the continuing resolution. “There’s no such thing as a clean CR.” He didn’t think the House would continue taking up the rest of the annual spending bills if one passed.

McGovern stated during the debate that “this is a complete waste of time” after the White House issued a veto threat on the GOP bill.

Democrats denounced the steep spending cuts in the GOP bill, instead of keeping current spending levels for all agencies, the measure walled off a few departments, but slashed others by 30 percent.

This bill would slash investments in cancer research and leave communities recovering from Natural Disasters out to dry as well as further cuts to our support of Israel, defund law enforcement and take food out of the mouths of millions. The bill raises costs for American families when the cost of living is already too high, said the top Democrat on the House Appropriations bill.

The bill would also extend authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration until the end of the year and includes $16 billion in emergency disaster assistance requested by the White House. Money for Ukraine is not included in it.

A group of Senate Republicans and Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema are working on an amendment to the Senate bill that would address border security, in an attempt to make it more palatable to the GOP House. It’s unclear whether their efforts will yield a proposal that will get support from Senate Democrats. But some conservative House Republicans remain staunchly opposed to including any additional aide for Ukraine.

A group of House Republicans and Democrats have been meeting to push a bipartisan plan in the event of a government shut down, warning about the negative impact on their districts and urging caution in the event of a government shutdown.

It’s clear that Mr. McCarthy is in a difficult position because he lacks the votes from his own party to pass a stopgap funding bill and therefore there is only one way to avoid a shutdown. His detractors have warned that would prompt a move to oust him from the speakership.

House G.O.P. leaders emerged from a more than two-hour closed-door meeting held after the vote without a clear path forward to avert a shutdown. In the wake of Mr. McCarthy’s defeat, much of the discussion was centered around adjusting the same strategy that he used in order to persuade conservatives to vote for stopgap funding legislation.

When the House Republicans retired for the night they had no idea what kind of legislation they would be asked to support on Saturday. A 14-day stopgap bill was one possibility for Republicans, though it was not clear if it could pass.

Republicans came out of the meeting “all over the map,” said Representative Steve Womack, Republican of Arkansas and a senior member of the Appropriations Committee. If Senate Republicans were unable to agree on a funding bridge, then House Republicans would be forced to consider the bipartisan stopgap plan.

The House voted to extend federal funding by 45 days, after they voted 335 to 91 against it. The fate of the bill in the Senate remains unclear, though the broad bipartisan support in the House puts pressure on senators to accept the stopgap and avoid a shutdown.

Rep. Matt McCarthy: Trying to win a re-election battle for the House bill that includes Ukraine aid and border wall funding

McCarthy said that Republicans and Democrats should focus on the American public.

House Democrats attempted to stall progress on the House bill in order to give the Senate time to vote first on their version, which does include Ukraine aid.

The speaker moved to this plan after 21 far right Republican members blocked a GOP bill on Friday. Those members “put us in a position to unfortunately pass something a little less conservative. Now the good news is this is still a pathway to get the kind of conservative wins we need through the appropriations process.”

House Republican leaders canceled the planned district recess for the beginning of October and said the House will continue to move their own spending bills — they passed four of the 12 that fund federal agencies.

McCarthy’s move opens him up to a challenge for his gavel. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has been hinting for days he was planning to file a resolution to oust the speaker. Under rules McCarthy agreed to in January when he was elected, only one lawmaker is needed to file a “motion to vacate” — a resolution that calls for a vote of confidence in the speaker.

Asked by reporters if he was worried about his job, the speaker said, “you know what, if somebody wants to remove because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try.”