Short-term House bill to avoid government shutdown fails as Oct. 1 deadline looms

After an almost three-hour Republican conference meeting, McCarthy told reporters he thinks that a clean CR without Ukraine funding could move through the House.

“I’m working through maybe being able to do that,” he said.

McCarthy seemed open to the Senate's bill — as long as the $6 billion in Ukraine aid is removed — but said he still wants a bill to originate in the House. McCarthy speculated that Democrats would oppose such a move.

But it's still not clear what the House's plan is for tomorrow. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said there was no agreement on from members on what a short-term bill could look like. “We’re all over the map,” he said.

Womack summed up the situation this way: “I think it’s pretty safe to say that tomorrow at midnight the lights are going to go out.”

The House is done for the day, with no more votes scheduled.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., informed lawmakers that they should be on Capitol Hill tomorrow, but they weren't told what they would be voting on, if anything.

The Senate went into recess this evening after Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., failed to unanimously pass a two-week continuing resolution, or CR, that would keep the government funded into mid-October.

Johnson's "clean" bill, which would keep funding levels at their current levels, does not include any of the provisions like Ukraine aid or money for the border that have drawn opposition from senators on both sides of the aisle.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., objected to Johnson's effort to pass the two-week bill by unanimous consent.

“We can’t be back here in this same situation in two weeks. We need a CR that gives us the actual time to get through our bipartisan spending bills,” said Murray, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

It's unclear what the Senate will do next, as their bipartisan stopgap measure, which funds the government through Nov. 17 but includes Ukraine aid that some Republicans reject, appears destined to fail in the House. The Senate has yet to vote on the bipartisan bill.

Top Democrats are calling on centrist House Republicans to team up with them to keep the government open after GOP hardliners tanked their party’s short-term funding bill.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said Republicans can sign an existing “discharge petition” that requires just six GOP signatures to force a House vote on a non-controversial continuing resolution, or CR, that would prevent a government shutdown.

That would require breaking with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which even the most moderate Republicans are reluctant to do. Boyle said if they’re serious about a solution, now is the time to champion the bipartisan Senate CR, which he called a “fair” stopgap measure that both parties favor and is “about as neutral as it gets.” That bill would fund the government through Nov. 17.

Read the full story here.

A popular social media tournament known as Fat Bear Week could be postponed if the federal government shuts down on Sunday.

The founder of Fat Bear Week, which has taken place at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska since 2014, today referenced the "many uncertainties" looming over the contest that's scheduled to begin Wednesday.

Mike Fitz said on his site that in addition to the furlough of park rangers, the event celebrating fat bears "will likely be postponed," particularly if the shutdown stretches beyond one or two days.

"While I remain confident that Fat Bear Week will happen this year, I am unsure if it’ll happen as currently scheduled,” Fitz said.

The House was supposed to get a two-week vacation in October, but that recess has been canceled, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Republican members, according to two sources in the room.

They'll spend that time working on individual appropriations bills, those sources said. The House has now passed four of the 12 that are needed to fully fund the government, but all include spending cuts that Democrats in the Senate and White House will not accept.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who voted against the House CR, compared a government shutdown to Covid closures in an effort to blame Democrats.

"Democrats are clearly — they’re fine with shutdown," she told reporters outside the GOP conference meeting that's taking place this afternoon. "They shut down the whole country over Covid for far too long and the American people suffered. I promise you, most Americans aren’t too worried about the government shutdown."

"This is because Democrats shut down the country, so there needs to be — people here in Washington need to understand how it feels to be shut down. Because the American people know exactly how that feels."

The House GOP conference is meeting in the basement of the Capitol now to try to figure out what their next steps are.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, one of the 21 defectors slammed leadership for waiting to pass funding bills at the deadline.

“We’re in the 9th inning. We’re playing baseball. It’s 7 o’clock at night, the sun’s going down and we don’t have lights. So now let’s panic, and that’s what we’ve done here,” he said. “We’ve waited too damn long.”

Millions of families are at risk of losing child care after this weekend when emergency funding allocated to providers during the coronavirus pandemic expires. Congress faces a Saturday deadline to act before the $24 billion Child Care Stabilization Program ends, putting thousands of day care centers, preschools and other child care centers in jeopardy.

At the forefront of the fight to extend the funding are lawmakers who themselves rely on child care to be able to do their jobs: moms and dads of babies and toddlers. With the government also barreling toward a shutdown this week, some of them are sounding the alarm that time to take action is running out.

“It’s frustrating, because when we talk about addressing something like this ... we can’t even do the bare minimum of our job by funding our government,” said Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., who has a 3-year-old son, Davis. “It doesn’t feel hopeful that we’re going to actually, with the current Republican leadership, rise to the occasion to address these urgent needs.”

Seventy thousand child care programs are projected to close as a result of the funding loss, and at least 3.2 million young kids could lose their child care, according to an analysis from the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

Read the full story here.

House Democratic leadership held a press conference, criticizing Republicans for failing to pass a short-term spending bill. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said there is a “Republican civil war,” and Democratic Whip Katherine Clark said the House has been “hijacked by extremists” who could avert a shutdown if they stopped listening to Donald Trump.

Jeffries said that the only path forward is the CR working its way through the Senate.

Asked whether Democrats have held conversations about potentially saving McCarthy if Republicans try to oust him from power, Jeffries said they met for over an hour today and the subject “did not come up.”

In a statement today, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “If House Republicans force a shutdown, it will have devastating consequences for NASA, families across the country, and America’s global competitiveness.”

NASA will "maintain the people to protect life and property — operational missions, such as satellites, landers, and rovers, as well as the International Space Station and its crew," according to Nelson.

The agency is still identifying just how many people would need to keep working through a shutdown.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., lambasted Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., after the House failed to pass a short-term funding bill put on the floor by GOP leaders.

"Unfortunately, a handful of people — and in particular, a party of one, Matt Gaetz — have chosen to put his own agenda, his own personal agenda, above all. There’s only one person to blame for any potential government shutdown, and that’s Matt Gaetz," Lawler told reporters.

Lawler added: "He’s not a conservative Republican. He’s a charlatan and as far as I’m concerned, when you’re working with Democrats who try to vacate the speaker, you’re a joke."

Gaetz was asked separately by reporters what he would say to people who think that House Republicans can't get their act together.

"I think that there is a fair criticism to be launched at Speaker McCarthy for having us so off schedule," Gaetz said. "We should have been doing this work in the spring and in the summer to consider these bills. We’ve done more legislating in the last 48 hours than we have done in the last eight months."

"The speaker’s continuing resolution went down in flames, as I’ve told you all week it would," he said.

A government shutdown would force an estimated 2 million military service members and more than 1.5 million federal civilian employees to go without pay during a funding lapse, according to the latest guidance from the Office of Management and Budget.

The OMB's estimates suggest that about 820,000 federal employees from major agencies would be furloughed in a shutdown, which means they would not be legally allowed to work.

Biden addressed the prospects of a government shutdown in remarks honoring outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, saying that if the House fails to fund the government, it would fail troops who would continue showing up for work despite not getting paid.

“It’s a disgrace,” he said, adding that the longer a shutdown lasts, the harder it becomes for military families to pay their bills.

“You can’t be playing politics when our troops stand in the breach,” Biden said. “It’s an absolute dereliction of duty.”

Read the full story here.

Ahead of the House vote, governors called on that chamber and the Senate to fund the government with a short-term spending bill and to "find bipartisan compromise."

"A government shutdown jeopardizes the country’s national security and readiness of our military service members, public health and social services, economic growth, transportation systems and National Parks and public lands," said GOP Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah, chair of the National Governors Association, and Democratic Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado, who serves as vice chair.

"By taking action this week, Congress has the ability to stop these potential impacts to our states and territories, while continuing to work toward a longer-term funding solution," they said.

WASHINGTON — A band of conservative rebels on Friday revolted and blocked House Republicans’ short-term funding bill to keep the government open, delivering a political blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and likely cementing the chances of a painful government shutdown that is less than 48 hours away.

The rebels, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a conservative bomb-thrower and a top Donald Trump ally, voted Friday afternoon to scuttle the 30-day funding bill, known as a continuing resolution or CR, leaving Republicans without a game plan to avert a shutdown.

The hard-liners say they are unconcerned if the government shuts down, as it appears likely to do at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. They want the House to pass all 12 appropriations bills, with steep spending cuts, then negotiate funding with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

House Republicans will now try to regroup, with little time left. McCarthy has scheduled a special closed-door meeting of House Republicans for 4 p.m. ET in the basement of the Capitol.

Read the full story here.

House fails to pass GOP stopgap funding bill

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The House is about to start voting on the GOP's short-term spending measure that would fund the government for 30 days while talks continue. The measure is expected to fail after a band of conservative rebels led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., vowed to block it.

McCarthy on Friday began shifting blame if federal workers don't get paid if the government shuts down.

Asked what his message is to federal workers who are worried about their paychecks, the House speaker said: "That is a good question and I am saying the Republicans in here are trying to keep the government open. It sounds like we think the Democrats are going to shut it down; I don’t think the government should shut down."

A band of conservative rebels on Friday vowed to block House Republicans’ short-term funding bill to keep the government open, delivering a political blow to Speaker Kevin McCarthy and likely cementing the chances of a painful government shutdown that is less than 48 hours away.

The hard-liners say they are unconcerned if the government shuts down, as it appears likely to do at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. They want the House to pass all 12 appropriations bills, with steep spending cuts, then negotiate funding with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Asked Friday if he had the votes to defeat the CR, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., simply replied: “Yes.”

Read the full story here.

The House Republicans' conference meeting has now been pushed back to 4 p.m. ET. It had initially been scheduled for 2 p.m. ET.

If the government shuts down, the Smithsonian museums will stay open through at least Oct. 7, the institute said in a news release this afternoon.

The Smithsonian will use its leftover funding from previous years to open all 21 museums and the National Zoo to the public for the week.

If House Republicans fail to pass their CR today — as looks likely — that will only advantage the Senate, which has a bill that lacks the deep spending cuts and border security money that conservatives are pushing for, Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told reporters.

"Doing nothing is not a hand. You don’t have any leverage. ... I think the failure to move something this afternoon clearly puts the advantage back on the Senate bill. And that’s just kind of a statement of reality," he said.

"I mean, there's a lot of people sitting around b----in' about something without a solution. ... I think we’ve gotta maybe swallow our pride a little bit, take a tough vote and keep this government operational," Womack continued.

Asked if this is the most predictable shutdown ever, Womack said, "Oh, yeah. ... I saw this train wreck coming."

The vast majority of what the federal government spends on health care is on big entitlement programs — Medicare and Medicaid. Those are not directly affected by a government shutdown, according to Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.

However, a prolonged shutdown could hamper the federal government’s oversight of Medicaid, which provides health coverage to people with low incomes. That oversight is particularly important right now as a pandemic-era rule that kept people enrolled in the program ends and millions of people begin to lose coverage. More than 90 million people in the U.S. get their coverage through Medicaid, according to the KFF.

If the shutdown persists, Levitt said, the effects will be felt directly in poor communities as funding for health clinics and other programs dependent on federal grants dries up. These clinics typically offer a wide range of services, including primary and preventive care, dental care and mental health services.

McCarthy managed to get Republicans on board with his short-term funding bill to fund the government through Oct. 31 — or at least to agree to start debate on it.

A procedural rule that will allow House Republicans to try to pass that CR later today passed 218-210.

But the CR is still expected to fail, as a band of conservative rebels, led by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., say they are unconcerned if the government shuts down. They want the House to pass all 12 appropriations bills, with steep spending cuts, then negotiate funding with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

McCarthy has rallied his troops behind the CR — which includes across-the-board spending cuts — saying a shutdown would “weaken” the GOP’s negotiating position.

The CR vote is expected a bit after 1 p.m. ET.

The House is now voting on the rule for the Republican bill to keep the government open through Oct. 31. If this passes, it will formally open debate, allowing them to pass the bill (known as a CR) later today. But several Republicans have been saying they won't support the CR.

The rule's success or failure will tell us a lot.

This morning, with less than 48 hours before the government is set to shut down, the White House is officially voicing its disapproval of the House’s temporary solution.

If the House bill makes it past the Senate and to the President’s desk, he plans to veto it.

The proposed bill would cut 30% of the funding, including for law enforcement, Meals on Wheels, Head Start and more, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement, "eviscerat[ing] programs millions of hardworking families count on."

“They are breaking their word, abandoning the bipartisan deal that two-thirds of them voted for just four months ago, and marching our country toward an Extreme Republican Shutdown that will damage our economy and national security,” Jean-Pierre said. 

In another press release this morning, the White House calls out House Republicans saying they’re playing “partisan games” by leaving out funding for border security, government services like the Federal Aviation Administration and the ongoing war in Ukraine, among other programs.

Jean-Pierre said the Senate has laid out a path to fund the government with bipartisan support, “House Republicans just need to take it.”

McCarthy's press conference this morning felt focused on pressuring Republican holdouts on the House's short-term bill to keep the government open.

The message: Do you want to be for House's border security measures (and keep the government open) or for Biden’s open borders?

With Feinstein's passing, the Senate is now split between 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans, temporarily. Democrats retain control of the chamber.

It's unlikely to affect the shutdown much, as the Senate has been working in a bipartisan manner and its bill to keep the government open is expected to pass with a large majority of senators from both parties.

But notably, Democrats lose their majority on the important Judiciary Committee — from 11-10 to 10-10. A tie vote in committee equals failure, which means Democrats temporarily won’t be able to advance Biden’s nominees to be federal judges without some Republican support.

Once California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, appoints a successor to Feinstein, the Senate is expected to shuffle committee assignments and fill the vacant seats.

House Republicans have called a special conference meeting for this afternoon. Originally scheduled for 2 p.m. ET, it has been pushed back by half an hour.

The last time the U.S. was facing a fiscal crisis, Biden cut short an overseas trip and swiftly met with McCarthy to try to avert a debt default two weeks before the deadline. This time, two days before the federal government appears all but certain to shut down, the president was out West raising money for his re-election campaign and delivering a speech about American democracy.

Biden’s hands-off approach to the looming shutdown is intended to project an image of him out in the country executing on what he considers key accomplishments as House Republicans fight over how to fund the government, White House officials say. 

But a shutdown could scramble Biden’s strategy by grinding his travels to a halt.

Read the full story here.

The House passed a bill giving $300 million in aid to Ukraine in its conflict against Russia last night, on a vote of 311-117.

But, significantly, more House Republicans voted against the Ukraine aid (117) than voted for it (101).

The vote reflects a growing populism within the Republican Party, which some in the GOP have likened to a new isolationism that questions the value of the current global order and the necessity of preventing a Russian victory in Ukraine.

We’d like to hear from you about how you’re preparing for a possible government shutdown, whether you might be out of work or feel the effects of shuttered services.

Please contact us at [email protected] or reach out to us here.

When Republicans forced a government shutdown in October 2013 in a fruitless quest to defund Obamacare, their Virginia gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, lost by fewer than 3 points. At the time, Cuccinelli’s top strategist lamented that “more than anything,” the shutdown “is what cost us the race.”

Ten years later, a new generation of House Republicans is on the verge of sparking a shutdown just ahead of another important election in Virginia, which could throw a wrench into Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s goals of capturing both chambers of the General Assembly. Early voting is already underway and the off-year election is being closely watched for clues about the 2024 presidential election landscape.

The 2013 shutdown “definitely helped us,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who was a freshman senator in 2013 and said Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe’s poll numbers improved as a result. “And people do see it since only one side ever flirts with shutdown — Republicans.”

Youngkin’s PAC, Spirit of Virginia, has raked in millions from donors around the country in hopes of holding the House of Delegates and flipping the state Senate, which would allow him to get some of his more controversial legislative goals, including abortion restrictions, across the finish line. It could also boost the national ambitions of a politician who has flirted with a presidential bid.

Read the full story here.

The federal government does an almost unfathomable number of things, so a shutdown would likely affect everyday Americans more than they realize.

While the 4 million people who work for the federal government would be most affected, their lost wages and halted operations would reduce overall economic growth forecasts by 0.1% or 0.2% each week, a range of economists, including the White House Council of Economic Advisers, estimate.

Those employees would eventually get paid, meaning taxpayers could be on the hook for billions of dollars in wages for millions of hours not worked, according to the Office of Management and Budget. And during a shutdown, the government ends up having to pay late fees and interest on bills it had to delay as it loses revenue that would otherwise be generated by furloughed IRS workers.

Staff, meanwhile, have been forced to put their real jobs on hold to prepare for the looming shutdown. For instance, it took weeks to safely shut down and reactivate nuclear weapons laboratories in previous shutdowns.

Past shutdowns show that federal government closure plans tend to be in constant flux as the situation drags on, with Congress sometimes appropriating partial funds and agencies scrambling to respond to emerging problems. Here’s a look at what could happen if the government shuts down again.

Read the full story here.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a vocal advocate of gun control measures who was known for trying to find common ground with Republicans during her three decades in the Senate, has died, according to two sources familiar with the matter. She was 90.

Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate, the longest-serving female senator and the longest-serving senator from California, announced in February that she planned to retire at the end of her term. She had faced calls for her resignation over concerns about her health.

After she announced her retirement, Biden hailed his former Senate colleague, calling her “a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values.”

Read the full story here.

The House will vote today on a Republican short-term spending bill that would extend funding through Oct. 31 at an annualized discretionary spending level of $1.471 trillion.

This plan also includes provisions on border security, as well as the creation of a fiscal commission. 

The House Rules Committee plans to mark up the rule for the bill at 8 a.m., with a vote on the rule at 11:30 a.m. and on final passage at 1:15 p.m., if everything goes to plan; several Republicans have continued to voice opposition to any short-term spending bill.

Late yesterday, the House passed three of four spending bills that the Republican leadership put on the floor this week in an attempt to move forward on funding the government.

While money for State, Defense and Homeland Security was passed, a bill to fund the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration failed by a 46-vote margin, with 27 Republicans voting against it; sticking points for some GOP members included the level of spending cuts to the department and a provision to block the FDA’s decision to let pharmacies mail the abortion pill mifepristone, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., told reporters before the vote.

The House also passed $300 million in aid for Ukraine in a 311 to 117 vote — money that had been stripped from the defense spending bill to boost support for that measure. All the votes against the aid bill came from Republicans.

The Senate is not expected to pass the bills in their current form, meaning a shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Sunday is no less likely. House GOP leadership and other negotiators had hoped progress on the bills would pave the way for a Republican-authored stopgap spending measure, called a continuing resolution, to prevent a government shutdown, but at least nine Republicans have said they won’t vote in favor of such a measure. Still, McCarthy has said he will put a short-term spending bill to a vote today. He plans to speak to reporters at 10 a.m.