The prospect of a government shutdown escalated significantly Tuesday as House Republicans’ intraparty tensions again came to a head in a dramatic floor vote amid negotiations on a nascent plan to keep the government open.
House Republicans’ inability to find agreement on even a stopgap funding bill that is destined to fail in the Senate again puts into focus the challenge before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as he tries to unite his party and avoid a government shutdown. Though Republicans largely agree on the need to significantly curb federal spending, divisions mostly over process have given any five lawmakers enormous power in the razor-thin majority.
But as hard-liners dug in on their opposition, their more moderate counterparts began to firm up contingency plans for a bipartisan effort to keep the government open, publicly condemning their colleagues’ obstinance.
Some Republicans are seriously considering getting behind a shell bill that could, as soon as next week, serve as the vehicle that allows moderates to supersede McCarthy’s control of the House floor and force a vote to keep the government open, according to three people familiar with the plan who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline preliminary and private conversations. What exactly gets included in such a discharge petition remains unknown, but those familiar with the planning said it would include a short-term funding plan to avert a shutdown that could garner enough support from House Democrats and the Senate.
Such a move would keep McCarthy’s fingerprints off whatever bill is ultimately voted on in the House. But it would undoubtedly irritate colleagues who have said that passing any bill with Democratic votes would immediately trigger a motion to remove McCarthy from the speakership.
Lawmakers familiar with several possible pathways to avert a shutdown — including another deal that could be struck between the Republican Governance Group and New Democrat Coalition — say that any compromise with Democrats would be a last-case scenario for Republicans, who desperately want to see their conference agree on a stopgap bill that could move them into negotiations with the Senate and salvage some of their policy demands on border security.
But that pathway stalled Tuesday when GOP leadership pulled consideration of a noncontroversial procedural vote that would have been a key step toward passing a proposed stopgap funding measure out of the House. At least a dozen hard-right lawmakers — angry over what they say is a lack of information on top-line budget numbers and assurances that the Senate will adhere to their fiscal demands — have stymied efforts to pass the 30-day funding bill.
A number of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum spent most of Tuesday huddling across the office suite of Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) trying to find a path forward. Notably missing was McCarthy, who has allowed lawmakers to take the lead on cobbling up a proposal that can pass.
“It’s not one way or the highway,” McCarthy said at a news conference Tuesday. “It may not look perfect to you, maybe you want one person to decide everything, I don’t think that’s the way government should work. I like a lot of ideas to come up and have the best idea win.”
Remember, Republicans controlled all the branches of government when they had the longest government shutdown in history a few years ago.
They are unfit to govern. They can’t figure out how to do the bare minimum to keep the lights on.
Longest shut down in history so far
This is so tiring to read.
These assholes aren’t the ones who suffer. It’s the federal employees, contractors, ancillary staff, military, and the families and communities they are a part of who suffer.
How the fuck are these obstructionist representatives voted in time and time again?
Voters are simple people, salt of the earth, the common clay of the New America. You know…
I see a Blazing Saddles reference - I upvote :-)
It does me good to see the Republicans tearing themselves apart over their own version of a Manchin-esque refusal to compromise.
That said, “it would undoubtedly irritate colleagues who have said that passing any bill with Democratic votes would immediately trigger a motion to remove McCarthy from the speakership” is… as sad as it is hilarious.
Yeah, it’s exactly the opposite of how government is supposed to work.
Manchin wanted to compromise. His compromises were just unacceptable. It was Sinema that wouldn’t negotiate in public OR in private.
I’m disappointed that no one in the media seems willing to point out that the whole reason they can’t be appeased is because shutdown is the goal. Their demands are incoherent and unreasonable by design so they can’t be met and wouldn’t be accepted by Democrats in the Senate even if they somehow passed the House.
Their intent is to further undermine public trust for government and its institutions. They’re breaking our government to convince us it’s broken, and people aren’t paying enough attention to see why.
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On an unrelated note, I really love that the text to articles is included in the post. I honestly read a lot more articles than I used to because I don’t have to click through and have my eyes burned out by the brightness of the inevitably light mode news site.
+1 for Lemmy
It’s a lot more work copying and pasting it all on a mobile app, but I’m glad someone appreciates it!
It’s so common I kinda thought it was a Lemmy feature lol. I’ll appreciate it even more now that I know it’s done manually by OP.
+1 @jeffw
You are a true MVP, my dude!
You do that manually? Wow that’s a lot of work. But I agree with the other commenter, turns out the reason I was hesitant to read the article on that other site was because the experience sucks. Thank you for making it so much easier.
At what point do we the people force some kind of change? If you had asked me 20 years ago what it would take to get me to march on the capitol and demand change I would bet that the vast majority of the answers I would have given have happened already. Yet here we all are just watching this shit show get worse and worse…
Is there a tipping point or are we collectively too disorganized, distracted, or disinterested to ever do anything about it? This cultural moment in time is so absurd that I can hardly believe it’s real despite the fact that I’ve been living in it.
It started to happen with Occupy Wall street protests. There was an almost universal agreement that something was wrong and needed to change. Yet it was too unorganized and too decentralized. If I would put on my tinfoil hat I think OWS was a bit scary to some very powerful and very rich people and there was a new push towards more division within the population, which makes something like that more difficult to organize today.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Some Republicans are seriously considering getting behind a shell bill that could, as soon as next week, serve as the vehicle that allows moderates to supersede McCarthy’s control of the House floor and force a vote to keep the government open, according to three people familiar with the plan who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline preliminary and private conversations.
But that pathway stalled Tuesday when GOP leadership pulled consideration of a noncontroversial procedural vote that would have been a key step toward passing a proposed stopgap funding measure out of the House.
At least a dozen hard-right lawmakers — angry over what they say is a lack of information on top-line budget numbers and assurances that the Senate will adhere to their fiscal demands — have stymied efforts to pass the 30-day funding bill.
Five GOP rebels forced Tuesday’s rule — largely backed by the majority of the conference — to fail, causing many Republicans to express the hypocrisy by their colleagues who want to pass all 12 appropriation bills but are preventing that from happening on the floor.
When it became clear the GOP lacked the votes to pass the rule, senior lawmakers walked to the center aisle where Reps. Norman, Ken Buck (Colo.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), and Matthew M. Rosendale (Mon.)
He said Freedom Caucus members and other hard-right holdouts were focusing too much on the initial part of the budget negotiations and blocking their own goals to fund the government, which remains the most basic priority for the House as enshrined in the Constitution.
The original article contains 1,631 words, the summary contains 262 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
