In his efforts to steer a course out of a looming spending crisis, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy scored a modest victory by overcoming a procedural obstacle, which keeps alive – for the time being – his ambitious plan to pass full-year government funding bills with his slim GOP majority and maintain his conference unity.
The House, which had been struggling for weeks to get through a vote to even allow legislators to debate the spending bills, got a break on Tuesday night when the chamber decided to start debating the bills by a vote of 216-212. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was the only Republican to oppose the motion after a number of steadfast, far-right conference members withdrew their concerns.
Nevertheless, the modest success was only the beginning for the troubled speaker.
A shutdown this week would not be avoided by passing the full-year appropriations bills themselves, which are packed with conservative demands and budget reductions that the Senate would not approve. However, McCarthy is anticipated to use the sincere effort to appeal to his party’s more extreme members and switch in the coming days to a continuing resolution that uses a temporary funding mechanism that some Republican hard-liners vehemently oppose and would be defeated in the Senate anyway because it is controlled by Democrats.
Whether the California Republican can continue to pursue a full-year budget plan with only Republican support, whether he will choose to give way to a costly and unpopular shutdown, or whether he will be pressured into relying on Democrats to keep the government funded, will likely depend on his ability to muster the votes for a stopgap spending bill. And if he makes a mistake, his own conference will very definitely move to remove him. Although it probably wouldn’t arrive in time to prevent a shutdown, several moderates from both parties are quietly working on a backup plan that would force a vote on a short-term measure with compromises for both sides.
the House considers its upcoming
Late on Tuesday, the upper chamber, which is typically last in the spending process, overcame a procedural hurdle and moved forward on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded as Senate leaders contrasted their process with the chaotic House.
The Senate’s continuing resolution would allocate around $6 billion in aid to Ukraine and $6 billion for domestic disaster relief, maintaining spending at existing levels through November 17. Although it’s not as tidy as some had hoped, Senate leadership has praised the proposal as bipartisan, and more than three-quarters of the chamber supported it in a procedural vote on Tuesday.
The “only way out of a shutdown is through legislation,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer maintained on Wednesday.
The New York Democrat declared, “By consistently supporting what the hard-right wants, you’re aiming for a shutdown.” “We can prevent harm to tens of millions of Americans if we work in a bipartisan manner like we do in the Senate.” Mitch McConnell, the leader of the minority in the Senate, supported the continuing resolution as well and cautioned against a shutdown.
The Kentucky Republican stated that the decision before Congress was fairly simple. “We can follow convention and provide the government with funding for six weeks at the going rate of business. Alternately, we might shut down the government in exchange for little real policy advancement.
Even while the plan has significant bipartisan support in the Senate, this week’s movement on it may be hindered by one or more senators, like as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has vowed to delay it because it will fund Ukraine.
Additionally, the plan may encounter resistance in the House despite receiving support from a number of Senate Republicans. If the bill passes the Senate, it is still unclear whether House leadership will take any action to bring it to the House floor.
The House might instead shift its attention to a continuing resolution it circulated last week, which featured an 8% cut to non-defense budget and border security measures approved by the House earlier this year, or something similar.