House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pumped the breaks Wednesday on hope that a bipartisan Senate spending deal would be enough to prevent a government shutdown in three days, bluntly telling reporters “I don’t see the support in the House” for the measure.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) endorsed a bipartisan temporary spending patch, known in Washington parlance as a continuing resolution or CR.
The Senate proposal would keep the government’s lights on until Nov. 17, giving both parties and chambers of Congress time to negotiate a longer-term appropriations package.
That evening, the Senate voted 77-19 to clear a procedural hurdle to advance the measure, with only Republicans in opposition.
“We can fund the government for another six weeks,” McConnell said Wednesday, “or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy.”
Looming over McCarthy’s apprehension about taking up the bipartisan Senate bill are threats to oust him from his position via a motion to vacate the chair.
Hard-right lawmakers such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) don’t want McCarthy to bypass their opposition to a continuing resolution by turning to Democrats for support. McCarthy has publicly downplayed the threats of an ouster.
The current iteration of the Senate’s CR would keep the government funding around “present levels” while allotting a little over $6 billion in both military and economic support for Ukraine and $6 billion for domestic disaster relief.
The Ukraine aid is a nonstarter for Republican holdouts in the House, where McCarthy can only lose four votes and still pass legislation along party lines.
McCarthy did score a win Tuesday evening when the House advanced consideration of four separate appropriations bills by a 216-212 vote, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) the only Republican dissenter. McCarthy said he hopes to pass those bills “by Thursday.”
Despite Greene’s opposition to the rules vote, she managed to slip in an amendment to the defense appropriations bill Wednesday to slash Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1.
To permanently fund the government for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, Congress must pass 12 appropriations bills.
So far, the House has only passed one, while the Senate has approved none — necessitating a CR to keep the government fully open past 11:59 p.m. Sept. 30.
McCarthy has urged President Biden to come to the negotiating table and demanded bolstered border security in exchange for a CR.
“The president can take action. The president could do something here that would really help us be able to keep government open and at the same time, secure our borders,” McCarthy added.
The speaker pointed to Democrat governors in New York, Massachusetts, and elsewhere who have been inundated with migrants pouring into their states.
Already, the US has blown past fiscal year 2022’s record-breaking number migrant encounters, with over 2.86 million encounters recorded this fiscal year, according to US Customs and Border Protection.
But Democrats are sour at McCarthy for reneging on the agreed-upon $1.59 trillion top-line funding figure from debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year.
The four appropriations bills championed by the House are clocking in below that threshold, putting the lower chamber at odds with the Senate.