House to Vote on 45-day Stopgap Funding Bill in Last-Ditch Bid to Avert Shutdown

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) leaves a meeting of the Republican House caucus in Washington, DC, on Sept. 30, 2023. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

House Republicans are set to vote on a 45-day extension of federal spending that includes no spending cuts and adds funding for disaster relief in an attempt to avert a government shutdown at midnight on Saturday.

A GOP-sponsored 30-day continuing resolution (CR) that included spending cuts and border security enhancements failed yesterday as 21 Republicans voted with Democrats to defeat the measure.

Now, eager to avoid being blamed for a government shutdown, mainstream House Republicans appear to be rallying behind a CR that includes neither of those provisions, hoping that enough of the holdouts–or some Democrats–will join the effort.

Divided Conference

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the Republican conference together yesterday at 4:00 p.m. to look for a pathway to avoiding a shutdown.

Several members told The Epoch Times that various solutions were bandied about but no consensus seemed to emerge. The mood was dramatically different from a GOP conference meeting earlier in the week, where lawmakers insisted they were closing in on a resolution of their differences.

Many of the 21 who voted no on the GOP-sponsored CR either did not attend yesterday’s meeting or left early, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) who has emerged as a spokesperson for the opposition group. Some, including Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), were visibly upset upon leaving the meeting, according to reporters at the Capitol.

Other lawmakers complained that it was difficult to make progress on finding a solution when those in opposition were not present.

GOP members met again on Saturday morning and landed on the idea of a 45-day “clean” CR, which would avoid a shutdown and allow additional time for the House to pass the remaining eight of 12 required appropriations bills.

The Senate has so far passed no appropriations bills but is at work on its own version of a CR, which would extend current spending levels through Nov. 14 and include an additional $6.15 billion in funding for the war effort in Ukraine and $5.99 billion for domestic disaster relief.

Many House Republicans are skeptical of sending additional aid to Ukraine without increased accountability and oversight, and some members are completely opposed to doing so.

Seeking Regular Order

Essentially, the holdout Republicans insist that “regular order” be followed in passing appropriations bills, which means allowing individual votes on each of the 12 bills with an opportunity to debate them and offer amendments from the floor.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) summarized their position of in remarks to reporters on Saturday morning.

“It was clear to me last night that the speaker will do anything to avoid the discomfort of a shutdown. I fear the majority [of] the conference will join him [in] doing that,” Mr. Good said.

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) in an interview with NTD in Washington on Sept. 30, 2021. Screenshot via The Epoch Times

“I will acknowledge that we, as a Republican House, should have done what the speaker committed we would do, which was to pass our appropriations bills long before September 30, and that was a failure,” Mr. Good said.

“Number two, we were making progress with passing our spending bills . . . We had momentum with those bills. We passed three out of four the other night,” Mr. Good added.

The House has passed four of the 12 required appropriations bills, which amount to about 70 percent of federal discretionary spending. The Senate has not passed any of the 12.

“What we should be doing is staying with the same intensity forced by the calendar and the pressure of a shutdown to pass our remaining eight bills and send those to the Senate, and then go into conference and negotiate,” he added.

Many of the GOP holdouts believe any CR will inevitably lead to additional delays in creating a full-year spending plan, which will result in the necessity of a last-minute catchall bill that would fund the entire discretionary budget in a single up-or-down vote—with no time to full debate or offer amendments.

“There’s no such thing as a “clean” CR,” Mr. Good said. “To keep in place the Biden-Pelosi-Schumer policies for another 30 days or 45 days, to keep the spending levels that are bankrupting the country, that is only going to lead to another CR or an omnibus. I predict if we pass a CR we will stop passing our spending bills.”

Keep Open, Keep Working

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who chairs the House Rules Committee, said that at this point the clean CR is the best way to allow Congress to keep doing its work.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) leaves the office of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 27, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“Nothing is going to get done in a government shutdown except getting out of a government shutdown,” Mr. Cole told reporters. “Let’s keep the government open ... let’s keep doing our work.”

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who chairs the GOP’s Main Street Caucus, sees the latest effort to pass a CR as a pathway to securing an overall win for Republicans.

“I think Kevin McCarthy has been clear that he wants to secure conservative wins. The best way to do that is to] make sure that we are passing our appropriations bills while government is open,” Mr. Johnson told reporters on Saturday morning.

He added that he expects Democrats will support the measure to avoid a shutdown.

Ryusuke Abe and Joseph Lord contributed to this report.