Here’s the latest on the funding crisis.
Congress careened toward a disruptive government
shutdown on Sunday as the Republican-led House groped for a way out of a
spending stalemate instigated by the far right just hours before funding for
federal agencies would lapse.
With their
own members standing in the way of a stopgap measure to keep federal funding
flowing, House Republican leaders did what they have been avoiding for weeks:
turning to Democrats for help passing a temporary bill.
Emerging
from a private meeting at the Capitol on Saturday morning, they said they would
bring up a measure that would keep government funding flowing for 45 days and
include diaster relief aid — but no money for Ukraine.
The
last-ditch effort, which would require Democratic votes to succeed, came a day
after the resounding defeat of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s effort to break the
impasse on Friday afternoon, faced with the resistance of a solid bloc of
Republicans that has refused to back any stopgap plan that would even
temporarily avert the shutdown.
It was
unclear whether the measure could pass the House or the Senate. The maneuver
House Republicans were using — which requires a two-thirds majority for passage
— would require a significant bloc of Democrats, who have strongly supported sending
additional aid to Ukraine, to join with Republicans.
“What I am
asking, Republicans and Democrats alike, put your partisanship away,” said Mr.
McCarthy. “Focus on the American public.”
The
strategy was a final effort by Mr. McCarthy to show that Republicans were
making an effort to keep the government open, just hours away from a shutdown.
Mr. McCarthy has so far been unwilling to turn to Democrats, who have
repeatedly said they are willing to vote for a bare-bones bill to simply keep
the government funded while negotiators can reach a broader agreement on
spending for the coming year. His right-wing detractors have said they would
try to remove the speaker from his post if he did so.
In
response, Mr. McCarthy said Saturday that “if I have to risk my job standing up
for the American public, I will do it.”
In the
Senate, members were set to vote just after midday to advance a bipartisan
proposal to fund the government through Nov. 17 while providing $6 billion in
assistance to Ukraine and $6 billion for disaster recovery to aid hard-hit
Hawaii, Vermont, Florida and other states. It had encountered resistance of its
own from Republicans who wanted to add new border security provisions, but that
effort had stalled.
Mr.
McCarthy said late Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the Senate
measure would be rejected in the House.
“After
meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate
bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” he wrote.
Still, that
legislation could pass with Democratic votes if Mr. McCarthy brought it to the
floor and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, on
Friday urged Mr. McCarthy to move forward with it.
“Everyone in this town knows the bill will pass,” he
said.
In an
appearance on CNN, Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado, said that
Friday’s humiliating defeat of Mr. McCarthy’s proposal represented a vote of
“no confidence” in him from the 21 Republicans who joined Democrats in bringing
down the bill, a move that severely narrowed the speaker’s options.
“This was a
vote where people didn’t have faith that Kevin McCarthy was going to do the
right thing,” Mr. Buck said.
Other
Republicans said it might be time for their leaders to rethink their strategy
of trying to find a way to get the holdouts to vote for what is known as a
continuing resolution, or C.R., because they had shown repeatedly that they
were not willing to do so.
“Why keep
running up a hill that you’re just gonna get shot in the head every time and
you’re wasting time and energy?” said Representative Mike Garcia of California,
a member of the whip team and one of a group of more mainstream Republicans in
districts won by President Biden who stand to pay the steepest political price
for the shutdown crisis. “The focus now needs to be getting a C.R. package that
can get us to 218. The blend of that voter makeup can change.”
With no
resolution in hand, federal agencies were bracing to be shuttered as of Sunday,
when programs would cease operation. The armed forces and other so-called
essential workers such as air traffic controllers and airport security workers
would remain on the job but without pay until the standoff was resolved.
Lawmakers see the mid-October deadline for military pay as a consequential
deadline were the government to shut down. National parks were to be closed as
of Monday, as leaders of both parties said the ramifications would be
significant.
“Shutting
down the government doesn’t help anybody politically,” Senator Mitch McConnell,
Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said Friday. “It doesn’t make
any meaningful progress on policy. And it heaps unnecessary hardships on the
American people as well as the brave men and women who keep us safe.”
Senator
Chuck Schumer called on Mr. McCarthy to quit trying to placate the hard-liners
among his membership, since any funding deal would ultimately have to be
acceptable to Senate Democrats and President Biden.
“At the end
of the day, these MAGA extremists, who are the ones responsible for bringing us
to the brink, fundamentally do not care about funding the government,” he said.
“Some of them are actually gleeful about a shutdown. Coddling the hard right is
as futile as trying to nail Jell-O to a wall and the harder the speaker tries,
the bigger mess he makes.”
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