Capitol Moving Ever Closer to a Shutdown

WASHINGTON — With both the House and Senate out for the Yom Kippur holiday, movement in the House on its glacial effort to avoid a government shutdown won’t resume until Tuesday.

But this past tropical storm-soaked weekend saw a flurry of behind-the-scenes activity setting the stage for a showdown on four appropriations bills.

The problem, as it has been since Congress returned to Washington from its August recess, is that it’s not even clear the rule to bring the bills to the floor for debate will pass, with holdouts angrily denouncing the fact provisions they oppose are still a part of the complicated procedural measure.

The appropriations bills up for consideration this week would fund the Departments of Agriculture, Defense and Homeland Security, as well as State Department foreign operations. 

On a call with Republican conference members Saturday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other senior GOP leaders said they wanted an open, transparent process and for all members to be engaged in it so they could finally get the bills past the finish line in their chamber. 

That effort seemed to quickly unravel, however, when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., announced Sunday that she would not be supporting the rule as passed by the Rules Committee.

The reason?

Her anger over the fact the rule would still effectively force members who oppose continued military and other funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia to vote for it in order to pass the Defense spending bill.

“For weeks, I’ve been asking for Ukraine funding to be a standalone vote, not cash hidden inside of other bills. For a moment, it seemed like that would happen. But it didn’t,” Greene wrote to reporters and her constituents in an email Sunday afternoon.

“Instead of stripping $300 million of funding to Ukraine from the DOD appropriations bill like House leadership promised, the Rules Committee passed a package that combines multiple appropriations bills into a single rule,” she continued.

“Not only will Congress be forced to vote on a rule that includes $300 million for Ukraine in America’s Defense spending bill, it is now combined with a State and Foreign Ops spending bill that gives a blank check to Biden to spend in Ukraine,” she said.

Though she conceded that “it looks like some of the House’s strongest conservatives are going to vote for the rule to help along the ‘process,’” Greene continued to insist voting yes means voting for more “blood money” for Ukraine.

“No one who wants peace should vote yes on the rule to advance the bills,” Greene said. 

“That’s why I’m a HARD NO on the rules package and a blank check for Ukraine,” she added.

Of course, aid to Ukraine is only one issue causing the fractious rift in the Republican caucus, and on Sunday, at least one member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., suggested on social media that the conference was “closing in on a discretionary spending number that could win enough votes to pass the appropriations bills.”

As has been written many times, due to the slim majority Republicans hold in the House, McCarthy can only afford to lose four votes, and even if the House passed all four of the party-line spending bills, it still would not avert the partial government shutdown now expected to begin at midnight on Saturday.

In addition to trying to rally support for the four appropriations bills on Saturday, McCarthy also proposed passing either a 30-day continuing resolution, which would keep the government funded until Oct. 31, or a 45-day resolution that would keep it funded through Nov. 15.

By the end of the conference call, it seemed all but certain that McCarthy will try to get one or the other of the proposals passed as part of a border security measure, H.R. 2, the House is set to take up before the end of the week.

Either, in theory, would then give the House enough time to pass the 11 pending appropriations bills and begin negotiations with the Senate to reconcile the likely vast differences in their two plans.

But the hardest of the hardliners in the Freedom Caucus were digging in on Monday.

“‘Conservative’ media is bashing us for holding the line against the status quo of reckless spending,” said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

“But remember: Back in January, these voices bashed the 20 who opposed McCarthy … before backtracking and celebrating the forced concessions we won. Stay the course. Hold the line,” he said.

In a second post, Crane added, “The congressional calendar is published every year. The last day of September is fairly predictable. Yet Congress hasn’t properly functioned since the mid-1990s. Time’s up. Change is long overdue.”

Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., also picked up the “hold the line” theme, saying in his own X post, “Congress is arguing for the continuation of the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer spending levels and policies that abuse Americans. We can’t have that. No more CRs.”

He also chided McCarthy over pressing for a vote on the four grouped appropriations bills.

“Instead of pushing to pass individual spending bills that might give us a chance to break the cycle of deficit spending and exploding national debt, my colleagues are advocating for the same economic death spiral that both parties have given us for many years,” he said.

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., added, “The process of toughening up the GOP to accomplish rather than pose and make excuses is only beginning. The pressure must be relentless because the country is in grave danger. The people know in their gut.”

Meanwhile, a proposal floated by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus to extend government funding at current levels through Jan. 11, 2024 — giving Congress more than three months to come to an agreement on fiscal year 2024 appropriations — is already said to be making inroads with moderate Republicans.

In fact, some are said to be considering signing onto a discharge petition that would hand control of the floor to the Democrats, who would then be able to pass a funding bill of their own. 

That petition would need the support of only six Republicans to become a reality, but last week, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., told reporters “any moderate Republican who wants to join up with the Democrats … will be signing their own political death warrant, and they will be handing it to their executioner.”

“I hope they don’t do that. But if someone’s going to do self-harm, there’s not a lot you can do,” Gaetz said.

Such admonishments are not preventing Democrats from holding out an olive branch to teetering GOP members.

Among these is Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who over the weekend urged his colleagues on the other side of the aisle to embrace a bipartisan solution to the funding impasse.

“After months of internal divisions and dysfunction, the Republican House majority has pushed our government to the brink of a shutdown that will begin in just eight days if Congress fails to act,” he said.

“As an appropriator and former majority leader, I believe it is irresponsible for Republicans to waste these precious next few days of floor time trying to jam through one or more of their radical appropriations bills that they know will never become law. 

“Anyone familiar with my record knows that I am a staunch advocate for regular order in the appropriations process. This is not that,” Hoyer continued. 

“My colleagues across the aisle have had nine months to advance individual bills yet only succeeded in passing one. If the experience of the past week is any guide, Republicans will be unable to get any of their bills enacted, much less passed, within a week while simultaneously bridging the massive divides within their own party on the most pressing matter at hand: a continuing resolution to keep the government open. 

“The American people will suffer because of this failure to govern,” he said.

“We must not allow a small, isolated group of far-right, extreme and irrational members to hold the American people and their government hostage. The Republican leadership and the majority of Republicans, who claim they are opposed to these extreme actions, should join with Democrats to pass a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government running. We’ve done this in the past, and it is the only possible, reasonable and responsible path forward,” Hoyer said.

In the Senate, meanwhile Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has stepped up efforts to complete his own stopgap funding measure, after his chamber failed to make progress on a three-bill $280 billion spending package last week.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is said to be negotiating with his members to support the still hazy framework.

As in the House, the main sticking point is continued funding for Ukraine and as of Monday, an agreement wasn’t in sight.

Even if the Senate were to pass its measure, it likely wouldn’t get to the House floor until late Saturday, or even after a shutdown begins.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and at https://twitter.com/DanMcCue