House Republican leaders canceled a vote to take up the annual defense spending bill on Wednesday because of infighting in the conference, highlighting the GOP disunity vexing Congress as the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline fast approaches.
Defense spending should be a layup for House Republicans, but their inability to find a middle ground signaled deepening division within the conference that is frustrating Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team.
Moments after the vote was canceled, Mr. McCarthy said lawmakers were “working through it.”
Conversations on how to move forward with the defense bill continued into the evening. House Minority Whip Rep. Tom Emmer, Minnesota Republican, said there would be votes on Thursday.
The defense spending bill would be only the second spending measure that the House has put to a vote. Mr. McCarthy had vowed to pass the 12 annual spending bills, a feat that had defied Congress for years, even if it takes a stop-gap measure to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 deadline.
The infighting, however, also threatens to derail a stop-gap spending bill.
When asked if the government was headed for a shutdown, Rep. Mike Simpson, Idaho Republican, said that two weeks ago he would have said no.
Now, he’s not so sure.
“If you can’t pass defense, you can’t pass anything,” Mr. Simpson told reporters at the Capitol.
Signs of trouble for the defense bill emerged Tuesday night as House Republican leaders prepared to move the bill to the floor.
Several members of the House Freedom Caucus pulled their support, saying they wanted much lower spending levels.
That has been a chief demand of the conservative lawmakers who want spending set $115 billion below the roughly $1.6 trillion topline agreed to by Mr. McCarhty and President Biden earlier this year in a deal to suspend the federal government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.
The Biden-McCarthy deal set the spending topline at $895 billion for military spending and $711 billion for nonmilitary discretionary spending in fiscal 2025, which begins on Oct. 1.
Rep. Dan Bishop, a Freedom Caucus member from North Carolina, vowed to vote against bringing up the defense bill or any spending bill until he was satisfied with reductions in overall spending.
He called the $115 billion “such a pittance of reduction” for House Republicans should easily agree to it.
“It’s gonna require a moment of leadership out of leadership,” Mr. Bishop said. “It’s not that hard, really isn’t.”
Reducing spending levels is just a piece of a puzzle Mr. McCarthy must solve to win over Freedom Caucus support for a stop-gap spending bill, which is known as a continuing resolution in Congress jargon.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is a member of the Freedom Caucus, said that there are an “enormous number of variables” that need answers before they support a short-term spending fix.
Chief among those would be attaching the Secure the Border Act to the spending package. Mr. Roy called it a “central pillar of anything we need to do,” into a continuing resolution.
But just adding that measure would not guarantee support.
“There currently is not an appetite to just, I would call it ‘blindly’ move forward with any one piece of the puzzle until we can actually look at the picture of the puzzle we’re actually trying to assemble,” Mr. Roy said. “I have no interest in grabbing a piece and just sticking it on a board and hoping.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washigtontimes.com.