After having two rule votes fail, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) scored a victory Tuesday when the House passed a rule for four appropriations bills, allowing them to advance to debate on the bills, but the threat of a government shutdown still looms.
While the House can now proceed on the defense, homeland, state and foreign operations, and agriculture appropriations bills, passing them will be a struggle as multiple Republican members have raised their objections to various provisions.
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“I want to do my job, and I think we should have been doing it two months ago,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said. “And now we’re going to be staying up late, working on something when the defense bill is dead on arrival, and the state foreign ops bill is dead on arrival because it practically has a blank check [for Ukraine].”
Even if the House were to pass the bills, the Senate would never take up the bills due to the provisions and spending cuts made in the bills. In light of this, McCarthy said the House will likely take up a conservative continuing resolution on Friday, two days before the government is set to shut down.
The Republicans’ continuing resolution would fund the government at a $1.471 trillion level and would be between 14 and 60 days.
But passing a stopgap funding measure, even one filled with Republican priorities such as border security provisions, will be a tough task due to significant resistance within the Republican Conference.
For example, on Tuesday, Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) said he will always be a “no” vote on a continuing resolution, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said he is a “no on a CR as it stands,” and Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) said he “won’t vote for a CR.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) have also expressed their opposition to a continuing resolution.
Those members alone are enough to tank any Republican-led continuing resolution if it garners no Democratic support.
In an attempt to flip some of the holdouts, McCarthy’s message has been that a vote against the continuing resolution is a vote against securing the border, and he has accused them of siding with President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“I don’t understand how a Republican is gonna sit and support what is currently happening on the border and defend President Biden on keeping the border wide open,” McCarthy said of the holdouts. “I don’t understand how someone can do that.”
But the holdouts aren’t budging, and McCarthy will need them to pass any kind of conservative continuing resolution off the floor.
“They do a CR every year; we’re trying to do something different than every year,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) said.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), a Freedom Caucus member who helped negotiate the original Republican continuing resolution package, acknowledged that House Republicans don’t have the votes to pass a stopgap measure.
Even if House Republicans are able to pass their own continuing resolution, it won’t help avoid a government shutdown as it has no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate or being signed into law by Biden.
Any final continuing resolution will have to be one that is bipartisan and something that is negotiated between both the House and the Senate, which is not likely to happen before the government runs out of money on Sunday.
While the House struggles to find an agreement on a continuing resolution and pass appropriations bills, the Senate has also had its own struggles as senators have yet to pass a single appropriation bill off the floor.
But the Senate released its version of a bipartisan continuing resolution and moved on the first procedural step to consider a continuing resolution, though it will likely be dead on arrival when it comes to the House.
The Senate’s measure would extend government funding to Nov. 17 and include over $6 billion in Ukraine aid, something a number of House Republicans, even McCarthy, are against including in a continuing resolution.
“They have enough money to carry them through for the next 45 days in Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “But why does that take precedence over what’s happening on the border? Why does that take precedence over the 300 families that are going to use their loved ones every single day in America?”
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With the House unable to come to an agreement on its own continuing resolution and not agreeing with the one the Senate is getting ready to pass, it is very unlikely that the issue will be resolved before Sunday.
“I think a shutdown is highly likely,” said one senior GOP lawmaker granted anonymity to speak candidly.
